Adrienne Rich & the Power of Denial

Adrienne Rich is generally considered one of the great poets in the feminist canon. Her poetry often examines the routes to empowerment and/or ways in which agency is denied to women. "Power" is no exception, and there are volumes of criticism analyzing its poignant storyline from a feminist standpoint. What also makes it a powerful* poem, though, is that Marie Curie's sacrifice provides insight when viewed from an endless number of disciplines. In particular, the way in which Marie Curie draws is empowered and successful through her denial of parts of her reality is a psychological phenomenon with numerous applications in the modern social world.

The last stanza of "Power" summarizes perfectly the relationship between Marie Curie and her denial. She denies "her wounds" (15) and that "her wounds came from the same source as her power" (17). There are, therefore, two layers to Curie's denial. On the one hand, she is denying her pain altogether. She refuses to acknowledge that she is slowly becoming incapacitated in any way. This is the first level. On the other hand, she is also deliberately ignoring the source of her incapacitation because her pain comes from her empowerment. That which makes her stronger is also killing her. This is the second, more complicated level of her denial because for her to stop denying the source of her pain is to accept that her empowerment was not without significant cost. This paradoxical relationship between dehabilitation and empowerment can be rationalized as a trade-off. More than a this, though, the example of Marie Curie that Rich constructs reflects similar processes that happen in end of life care settings. 

Jason Rodriquez explores this phenomenon in the relationship between care providers and patients in nursing homes, specifically looking at the ways that the care providers use denial to cope with the emotional strain of their jobs and provide a higher quality of care for the patients. Like Marie Curie denies her failing health, the care providers in the nursing home studied by Rodriquez "denied the agency of unruly residents" (176). When residents would act up or rebel against their authority, the care providers automatically assumed that the residents couldn't help it, that their physical condition was causing them to act in such a way. Agency, as a sociological term, generally refers to the ability of an individual to act autonomously within their social context (Biesta and Tedder 9). In Rodriquez, the nursing home care providers chose to believe their patients had no such ability, that their actions were predetermined by their context. At face value, it seems cold to assume people's behaviour is predetermined, but as Rodriquez contends this assumption actually led to a higher quality of care (176). "The staff endure these out bursts without anger or regret so long as they believe such events to be unintentional and not the willful action of a mean, angry individual who is unworthy of care" (Rodriquez 176). Believing the patients couldn't do anything differently allowed the care providers to not take things personally, and thus the care providers were more compassionate. Denying the patients' agency frees the care providers to achieve a higher level of care with less stress, in much the same way that in "Power" denying her limitations allows Marie Curie to continue doing the work that empowers her. Thus, both Rodriquez's research and Rich's poem set up a paradigm in which denial, usually considered an unhealthy coping mechanism, can be used in a positive manner.

*no pun intended

Works Cited

Biesta, Gert, and Michael Tedder. "How Is Agency Possible? Towards an Ecological Understanding of Agency-as-achievement." (n.d.): n. pag. Feb. 2006. 

             Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

Rich, Adrienne. "Power." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. D. New York/London: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Rodriquez, Jason. "Attributions of Agency and the Construction of Moral Order: Dementia, Death, and Dignity in Nursing-home Care." Social Psychology 
             Quarterly 72.2 (2009): 165-79. JSTOR. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

NOTE: This is a link to other analyses of "Power" many of which provide feminist viewpoints. Some of these criticisms also expand on the opening stanzas of the poem which I mostly glossed over, and the critics have interesting things to say. Mostly, Adrienne Rich is really cool. Also, if you're interested, Jason Rodriquez the author of the article has written some other interesting things on similar topics.