In Gwen Harwood's poetry, the changes in an individual's perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences

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The Glass Jar

Gwen Harwood

Gwen Harwood was born in 1920 in Brisbane, Queensland. Her family was affectionate and loving and as a child she was immersed in music, philosophy, religion and language. She was raised in a family of strong women, her grandmother lived until she was 80, and her mother was a feminist who was into community issues. It was Gwen's grandmother that introduced her to poetry.

Her father played the piano and violin. Both Gwen and her brother were given piano lessons. She then became a music teacher, organist at the All Saints Church of England in Brisbane and a member of the Handel society. Then she became actively involved in religion, as she had always had a fondness for the Old Testament.

She began writing poetry in 1950 and in this time, Australia was predominantly white and middle class. Men were still dominant, and only very few women entered the work force. Gwen was of upper middle class, and many of her poems are based on her Christian beliefs and society's beliefs. However, Gwen did not adhere to strict social rules, instead challenging the beliefs towards motherhood and many other issues of the time.

Every time she attempted publishing her poetry most of them were rejected due to the marginalization of women at the time. This is where she began using pseudonyms such as Walter Lehmann and Miriam Stone. In 1945 she married linguist William Bill Harwood, and moved to Tasmania.

She was awarded with prizes such as Robert Frost and Patrick White in 1977, Victorian Premiers Literary Prize in 1989 and many more.

The Harwood family had moved to five different houses, and these all provided settings for her poems. As she felt she did not belong in Tasmania, Gwen Harwood refers to people who feel they don't belong often. In 'Oyster Cove', she writes sympathetically towards the Aboriginal people who were killed at that spot by introduced European diseases.
She had a fear that marriage can eliminate a person's independence and creativity. In her poem 'I am the Captain of my Soul' she tells of children who don't see their parent's troubles, and instead increase them.
Gwen Harwood died in December 1995.

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The Glass Jar and Father and Child

In Gwen Harwood’s poetry, the changes in an individual’s perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences, usually in the form of a person or an event. These changes are either results of a dramatic realisation, as seen with shattering of a child’s hopes in The Glass Jar, or a melancholy and gradual process, where a series of not so obvious discoveries produces similar reformation. An example of the later case would be Nightfall, the second section of Father and Child, where ...

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