Abstract

This paper seeks to demonstrate that William Carlos Williamss career as a medical doctor has aroused in him a deep concern and sympathy for the women of his society. The paper also aims at defining the maladies that proved detrimental to American women, such maladies that incite Williams to adopt an unprecedented pro-feminist position. In his Paterson, he pathetically reflects the American womans wretched position in a capitalistic society. Here Williams finds her inarticulate and marginal, suffering social and sexual inhibition, and above all financially impoverished, all of which contribute to her spiritual and emotional barrenness and physical sterility. He makes it clear that age-old misogynism still persists even today. The American woman, as the granddaughter of Puritanism, is made to fear her body? Williamss sympathetic concern for woman, however, goes far beyond his recognition of her suffering and even beyond his affectionate care and material help. He realizes that her voice should finally be heard and be made articulate, hence his poem dedicated to her. He attempts to raise her to the status of an epic hero in Paterson. By incorporating an idyll of two lesbians in his poem, Williams endeavors to assert that the lesbian has a perfect right to exist. And by making the virgin and the prostitute an identity, Williams strives to eliminate the social differences among women themselves. But most important to Williams is his attempt to blow up the blockage separating men and women, and he can do so by declaring that men possess feminine qualities in them, therefore, men and women are complementary