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