Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Consumption Of Children In A Capitalistic Society, Jessica Melendy

Undergraduate Review

Audre Lorde’s, “Now that I Am Forever with Child”, and Sharon Olds’, “The Moment the Two Worlds Meet,” juxtapose the natural aspects of childbirth with late capital methods of consumption and reproduction. In “Now that I Am Forever with Child”, Audre Lorde describes her fetus as a budding flower but feels detached from it during and after delivery. Sharon Olds also uses the metaphor of an opening flower to demonstrate the climax of delivery in “The Moment the Two Worlds Meet.” In both poems, the birth of the child is anticlimactic and disappointing for the mother who …