Natural Imagery and the Construction of a New Femininity in HJD.'s Early Verse

Summary Hilda Doolittle, othenvise known by her initials H.D., was an American woman poet of the modernist er a. Her early verse which is collected in her Collected Poems (1925) offer an immense variety of natural imagery which establish allegories for themes she was most concerned with: womanhood and male dominance. Her lovefor nature is apparent in almost all her poems but her desire to define femininity through a rich use of natural phenomena is even more obvious. ~H.D.'s searchfor the meaning of the significance of being a woman pushed her to employ natural objects as metaphors for her philosophy of womanhood. Her early verse is strictly impersonal and adheres to Imagist techniaues which, in the end, strengthen her rejection of Victorian femininity and glorify a new, perhaps less tamed, more untamed woman-ness.