Hilda “HD” Doolittle uses highly suggestive fictional poetry to redefine gender roles and contradict the characterization of women as delicate and fragile. HD draws from ancient Greek literature to insert strong, non-traditionally feminine women into current culture and reinscribe traditionally feminine figures – Helen of Troy, Rose, or Mother Mary – into tougher, more masculine roles. Her poems, full of natural imagery, take on Whitmanian elements to assert that women must escape into the natural world to lose their feminine roles. Furthermore, her style is inspired by classical modernism, defined by TS Eliot's “Tradition in Individual Talent,” as it addresses ancient traditions and customs regarding religion and the status of women. HD's "Wash of Cold River" mixes harsh natural imagery with classical archetypes of female fragility as well as Greek and Christian allusions, deifying nature and the human experience in a Whitmanian style and following the critique of TS's "Traditional in Individual Talent" Eliot and reinvention of the traditional religious order, ultimately apotheosising a newly strengthened idea of ​​femininity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIn "Wash of Cold River," HD describes a single image of the natural world that blends together "delicate" femininity and "frigid" hardness and , thus equating classically paradoxical ideas. Beginning with the antithetical description of a “cold river in glacial land” filled with warm Greek “ionic water,” the HD immediately merges two natural opposites, creating the forefront for the mixing of abstract and man-made ideas. HD places "delicate... camellia flowers..." - a common symbol of femininity - within this rugged landscape and describes them as "frozen", metaphorically redefining a woman's status and highlighting the freedom of the natural world to do so. Furthermore, the poem describes the hybrid river flowers as "colder than a rose", separating them from the archetype of pure femininity and beauty, showing that classically feminine women will not necessarily change themselves, but that a new type of women emerge . This same theme is reiterated when HD moves from the river flower to the wind flower, stating that it not only “holds the breath of the north wind” but holds “none else.” Instead of “freezing” a feminine and “delicate” flower and, as such, simply adding hard and “cold” characteristics, the “wind flower” is instead imbued with non-feminine characteristics, creating an entirely new type of woman. Mixing archetypes of the feminine with descriptions of harshness and harshness, all within the natural world, HD contrasts and reinvents the meaning of femininity within modern society. Having addressed and reinvented the traditions and customs of the modern world, HD draws on both Whitman's deification of the natural world and "Tradition and Individual Talent"'s call to poetry as a new religion, worshiping the figure of the new feminism she creates in "Wash by Cold River. After describing and constructing the image of flowers as an example of hybrid femininity, the image begins to take human form, developing “hands and intimate thoughts”. But, instead of becoming a woman, it becomes a “rare” statue , beautiful, pure” but “inaccessible,” a copy of the real idol – suggesting that this example of extravagant femininity cannot exist in the real world but must be imagined through “pure rapture” or assent to heaven. This idea that such a figure can only exist in the presence of God challenges hybrid women and makes poetry her gospel, affirming, in true modern style, poetry as a new religion Despite.