Restoring the Mother in Hilda Doolittle’s Trilogy

Abstract

Hilda Doolittle’s Trilogy reposes the myth of the hero quest of the mother. This new myth
restores the mother (i.e. the Lady of her vision) the central position in the resurrection
story. Despite all the barriers and obstacles, mother remains central to inspire her offspring.
Whereas Eliot projects the rotten state of the Western culture on the women’s body, H. D.
subverts this conventional image to create a new myth in reverence of the source of artistic
inspiration. Eliot demonstrates the decayed state of European culture while H. D. disrupts the
normative cultural delineation of women as mere objects either to be glorified or abhorred.
H.D.’s regenerative vision stems from the feminine creative source, the mother goddess. Like
Eliot and other modernists she uses mythological allusions in her attempt to regenerate the
decadent European culture and life, but her approach differs from theirs. Her effort is to
restore the feminine voice –through the representation of the mother goddess –a space in
the male dominant European tradition. In modernist reconstruction of myth, we can see
multiple forms of narratives, such as film and fiction with underlying universal patterns
of archetypal characters and their actions. In modernist narratives, mother embodies love,
creation and sacrifice.