Hemans "The Wife of Asdrubal” confuses the idea of a mother and her role as the child's protector. Traditionally, we think of a mother as inhabiting the private sphere and devoting themselves to the care of her children. However, the idea of caring for/protecting children is pushed to an extreme in Heman's poem. The wife cares for her children to such a point that it hurts them. In protecting them, she is forced to kill them. This is a very troubling concept. It leads us to ask how can women exist in both spheres? It seems that when the mother is forced to both live in the public sphere as well as the private sphere that the mother's correct ways of caring gets confused. Was it right for the wife to kill her children? Or had her motherly instinct to care and protect been pushed to a ghastly extreme by exposure to the outside sphere?
I definitely think she was more concerned about her SOB husband than protecting her children, who were going to perish anyway and cause her husband grief no matter how things ended. She is described as being fierce, but rather than spawning from maternal instinct, it is from anger and vindication. What is it that she cries into the night? That her children be delivered into safety? Nope. She curses, "may the manes of thy children rise to chase calm slumber from thy wearied eyes," down at her husband.
ReplyDelete^I agree with this. She seems to want vindication, and is willing to sacrifice her children to do so, regardless of whether or not they would perish anyways. While we applaud her for sticking it to her husband, we are again uncomfortable with the sacrifices made to do so.
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