A Study On Female Image In Whitman’s Leaves Of Grass And Tagore’s Gitanjali

In the middle of nineteenth century, Whitman published his poem collectionLeaves of Grass which brought fresh air to the American poetry. The poems praisewomen directly and candidly in a way that no other American poets had everemployed to embody their wishes for the equality of male and female in a harmoniousworld. And in the first decade of twentieth century, the Indian poet Tagore also createdthe ideal female image in his God Offering poem collection Gitanjali—the womanwhile bearing the suffering from the reality, does not lose her pursuit for the spiritualequality and freedom. Despite the different nationalities and times of their creatingcareer, the two poets share important similarities in their female image creating andtheir attitudes towards women. This thesis, by applying the related image theory: theimage imitation, the ambiguity of image and the foiling function of imagery, studiesthe female images in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Tagore’s Gitanjali, to analyzethe writing techniques and the female images in their poems, and to interpret theirattitudes towards women in their poetry. Through the analysis, this study finds thatthey share a similar positive attitude towards women: affirming their equality withmale in marriage and appreciating their role as mothers—their breeding of new life,cultivating new generation and bearing the catastrophe. At last this study concludesthat Whitman and Tagore create the ideal female image in their poetry and makeremarkable contributions to help women realize their value.