The title and first line of "Mother..." centralises the role of women and implies that giving life is not a brief moment of experience, but a life-time of nurturing, care, influence and sacrifice. This theme is also explored in the other women poems, including "Suburban Sonnet" and "An Impromptu for Anne Jennings". In these poems Harwood portrays the role of women in the domestic sphere as a difficult one, full of sacrifice and anguish, but fulfilling in the end. She does not condemn the role of women; rather, she celebrates it. This is evident through the repetitious links of the women with symbols of domesticity. In "Mother..." the mother's face is compared to "fine threadbare linen/ worn still good to the last" and the daughter's memories of her mother are those of the domestic scene; "a lamp on embroidered linen, / my supper set out, your voice/ calling me in...". Harwood focuses on the menial e

The theme of women rising above the torment of suppressed spirits is also evident in "Mother..." when the persona speaks of the "wild daughters becoming women". She portrays the development from innocence to wisdom as one full of anguish and pain, a taming of the spirit. In "...Anne Jennings" the women's intellect represents their spirit, and in the day to day business of raising children, their spirit seemed to have got lost along the way, only to rise up again later in life when their children were adults.

Aging and death in "Mother..." are seen as inevitable, necessary, even beautiful stages of life. There is a sense that the mother is only leaving this world in the temporal, and that her spirit will live on through the memories of her child. This idea of temporal versus spiritual is also dealt with in "Nightfall", with the statement "things truly named can never vanish from this earth" summarising the underlying theme of many of Harwood's poems, including "Mother...". It is the memories of the daughter that will keep the mother alive, the references to the "fabric of marvels", the "remembered hours" that make up the memory of the mother in the daughter's life. "The Violets" is another of Harwood's poems which explores memory and the images of the final stanza of each poem parallel; the domestic scene, the mother setting the table as sun sets "on my father's

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Approximate Word count = 924
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)