Anger as a fuel for change: the representation of anger through its metaphors in the works of Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde and Siri Hustvedt

Abstract

If Virginia Woolf was almost in touch with her anger, modern women writers have become more and more vocal about their conditions and even more direct with their anger. Women use that anger to write, create art, make music, and try to change society. It’s the fuel that initiates the creative machine with the purpose of empowering other women to examine their conditions, to find within themselves that spark to produce change. Starting from this realisation, the main objective of this research is to examine how anger is imagined and expressed through poetry and prose, analysing the metaphors used to define it within its context. The research will start with an analysis of the concept of metaphors and how it is defined by Gemma Corradi Fiumara in her book "The Metaphoric Process: Connections Between Language and Life". From a general idea of what is a metaphor to which are the metaphors regarding anger, the thesis will then delve into the current literature on Virginia Woolf's anger that has also inspired Adrienne Rich to write her essay "When We Dead Awaken". From this essay and the previous definition of metaphors, I will analyse the poems by Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, two contemporary women writers, and then two novels by Siri Hustvedt. The objective of my research is to highlight the hidden - or not so hidden - expressions on anger that women writers put into their works and how these metaphoric expressions relate to their experience as women and as women writers, and also how has this changed from Virginia Woolf to the 70s and 80s and up to the present times.