f the father, while the mother was sleeping the sleep of one exhausted by her housework. That was the situation when her sons were born.
The usual course then was for the father to work and the mother to sublimate her needs and desires to the family:
the poet I'd ceased to be when I got married.
It's taken me years to write this to you (Pratt 13).
The fact that she had internalized her poetry left her at times "mean as she can be." Now the boys are grown, and she is no longer the woman she once was. In the past, she could imagine no future beyond the family, but now she is a human being fully able to express herself and seeking much more from her life. What she is doing now is assuring herself that her sons will learn from her and will be able to see evil when it appears, to know good and do it, and to find work that they like doing. She also wants her sons to be aware and not to choose the anesthesia that affects most human beings so that they only want not to feel, not to be
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