Glory Of Women Analysis

Glory of Women – Analysis Glory of Women is a poem about how blinded women are by the supposed honor and glory of war. They are ignorant of the hardships and pain that all men at war have to go through, instead seeing only the fame that they believe results afterwards. The persona in this poem is the author, Siegfried Sassoon. He speaks as a soldier who has experienced sufferings of war to all women in general, who stay at home, fantasizing about their husbands’, sons’, fathers’, and any other men in their lives for their bravery in participating in the war. This poem is written in an Italian (Petrachan) sonnet form, with a rhyme scheme of A B A B C D C D E F G E F G. It has a rhythm of Iambic Pentameter, which contains ten syllables per line, and read stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, etc. There aren’t a lot of techniques used in this poem; but many different cases of alliteration is used; for example, “heroes, home” in line one and “blind with blood” in line eleven. Strong imagery is used to emphasize how terrible war is. Lines eleven and fourteen give gruesome pictures of the aftermaths of war, “trampling the terrible corpses – blind with blood,” and “his face is trodden deeper into the mud.” This is done because the poet wants the reader to have a clear mental image of how grisly war is, and also remember what it results in. Using blood and corpses to paint images had a strong effect on stressing the brutality of war. Glory of Women conveys its message very well because of the ways the poet words his topic. The beginning octave describes women and their actions, thoughts, and feelings about men at war. Sassoon tells of how women love men that are heroes, how they take delight in hearing dangerous war experiences, how they crown a man for his acts of bravery, and how women mourn the memories of those who perished in the war. Then the poet proceeds in the following sestet to inform women of what they had never thought of: that war itself is not about honor and glory; in the end, what it really comes down to is pain, loss, and most often of all, death. Siegfried Sassoon displays his feelings towards war very strongly in this poem. His tone is very obviously bitter and angry about the fact that women don’t realize all the difficulties men have

to endure to survive war. He resents how no one felt the need to change their opinion and educate them about war. This leads to the theme being how women are unaware of the harsh realities of war. Because of this, Sassoon wrote this poem both to teach and to mock women for their ignorance. This is also reflected in the title of the poem, Glory of Women, which is greatly significant because although glory generally refers to someone or something’s reason for pride, the poet uses this word and twists its meaning to indicate sarcasm. The mood of this poem is one of bitterness. The poet tried to put his feelings into the poem and spread his opinions through it. After reading Glory of Women, I felt that I could sympathize with Sassoon, because he was so strongly set against war, but during his time, not many people shared his views. It also makes the reader thoughtful, because Sassoon’s message in this poem is very stereotypical, stating that all women think in one way, but that was not always true. I think this poem is very effective because it changes its tone between the octave and the sestet, from speaking of the good opinions women have of war, to how wrong women are in not realizing how terrible war really is.