Hilda Doolittle: Sheltered Garden Analysis

Growing up around nature and flowers, Hilda Doolittle’s love of all that is natural shines through many of her poems as an adult such as such as “Garden,” “Last Winter,” and “Sheltered Garden” where she exhibits scenes of wonderful landscapes and Mother Earth in her writing. However, in “Sheltered Garden,” H.D. reveals a sense of displeasure among man-made flower and plant gardens. She expresses the longing for nature to take its course and sweep away all plants maintained by man.

 

"I have had enough.

I gasp for breath."
Hilda makes it clear from the beginning of the poem that she is pretty much fed up. With what, you make ask? Let's find out. 
 

"Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest—"
Here, H.D. is implying that all roads lead back to one thing. 
 

"then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate."
Even if you turn around and go in another direction, you still end up finding the same thing. 


"I have had enough—
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress."
Oh! This is what she has had enough of. Pretty flowers? That's odd. Who could get tired of wax-lilies?


"O for some sharp swish of a branch—
there is no scent of resin
in this place,"
Resin. That tree sap and natural pine scent you might smell when wandering through a wooded forest. And H.D is saying that there is none. Nor are there any dry branches "swish"ing. But it seems that this is actually the problem.

 
"no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent—
only border on border of scented pinks."
Miss Doolittle must have a problem with pink. She is stating in these lines that she wants to "taste bark and coarse weeds." She doesn't want to smell pretty pink flowers.

 
"Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light—
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?"
"Fruit under cover" Man puts fruit under cover. "Wanted light" The fruit wants nature, instead, to nurture it. "Pears wadded in cloth--" Meaning pears touched by man-kind. 

 
"Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit—
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shrivelled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
with a russet coat."
In this stanza, Doolittle is asking mankind to let nature take its course. To stop "coaxing" the fruit (because apparently, this makes fruit bitter). Let them cling to their branches of which they were made, let them ripen themselves. 

 
"Or the melon—
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste—
it is better to taste of frost—
the exquisite frost—
than of wadding and of dead grass."
 Again, Hilda is expressing her opinion of the importance of nature creating and caressing the fruit, not mankind. It is after all, "better to taste of frost than of... dead grass."

 
"For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life."
"Beauty without strength." Here she is referring to the "beauty" of a maintained garden. It might look nice, but it has no strength to stand on its own. It relies on mankind to nurture it. 
 
"I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves—"
Pretty much she wants to see the "wind break" and destroy that pretty garden.
 

"spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince—
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant."
And in place of it, she wants twigs, broken tree limbs, branches, etc to cover the nice flower and vegetable/fruit garden. She also wants it to be a "fight" between the "natural" nature and the man-made nature. And judging by her past lines of this poem, it's safe to say which form of nature H.D. wants to win. 


"O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place."
Yep, you got it! The nice garden has to lose, to be blotted out and forgotten and to be replaced with those twigs, leaves, and branches from a couple stanzas up. She also wishes mankind would learn to find beauty in all that is natural.

The basic message of “Sheltered Garden” that H.D. is trying to convey is to see the greatness in natural beauty. She makes a very intent and clear message that she is tired of sweet-scented pink flowers and tart fruit. 

She insists on allowing fruit to naturally ripen, to not be coaxed by men but instead to “let them cling, ripen of themselves/ test their own worth/ nipped, shriveled by the frost/ to fall at last but fair,” (Doolittle 28-31). 

She also longs for the natural smell of resin and for the wind to sweep the flowers clean of their petals—for natural chaos to take effect.


This wind-swept image she creates clearly provides a more natural sensation of the outdoors as opposed to a structured and maintained garden which she resents in the poem.


Several underlying events in H.D,'s life could have impacted the true meaning and origin of this poem. H.D. was the daughter of the director of the Flower Observatory in Philadelphia. She spent many of her childhood days helping her father maintain the flower gardens of the observatory. 

Spending the majority of her youth around plants and nature, H.D.’s love for gardening and flowers grew. 

Although Poetry Foundation refers to Hilda as the favorite child of her father’s, the source later goes on to say that “Hilda wanted to be an artist like her mother. But her father forbade art school. H.D. recalled that as a child, her mother had loved to sing, but she [Hilda] never once sang after her father complained of the ‘noise’” (Poetry Foundation). 

However, this was only the beginning of a complicated relationship Hilda would experience with her father.


It was in her teenage years that her relationship with her father began to significantly dwindle after she met the poet Ezra Pound. Charles Doolittle’s disapproval of Hilda and Ezra’s relationship began when he found them “embracing” and a scandalous relationship followed. The relationship between H.D. and her father never fully recovered. 

“Sheltered Garden” could perhaps be a reference to the actual garden she bonded over with her father in her adolescent years which was always clean and maintained. Being that H.D. wants to “blot out this garden” and “to forget” (Doolittle, lines 55 and 56) perhaps means she is longing to forget spending time with her father in the flower observatory out of resentment from his lack of approval of her wanting to be an artist like her mother and of her relationship with Ezra Pound. 

This sheltered garden she refers to in the poem possibly brings back memories she does not want to remember from the ongoing conflicts with her father. 
H.D. was also known to be a proactive feminist. She was raised in a time when women were widely portrayed as weak and vulnerable and were oftentimes compared with sweet and delicate flowers—while men were thought of as the strong nature counterpart, able to withstand “harsh winds” and strong obstacles. 

A feminist’s ideal is to change this notion and show society that women too can be strong and take on “harsh winds,” unlike a delicate flower in a windstorm. By emphasizing that she has had enough of sweet and weak flowers could possibly mean she has had enough of being looked at as weak and vulnerable. With this poem, she wants to show her readers she can handle the harsh storms. 

Furthermore, although society’s view is that women are considerably the more “beautiful” of the sexes, H.D. believes that beauty is nothing without strength. She says in her poem “for this beauty/ beauty without strength/ chokes out life” (Doolittle 40-42) meaning there is no true liveliness with merely beauty. Strength and natural beauty—not created beauty—are the true essences of life which is also a point H.D. is trying to get across when she wrote “Sheltered Garden.”
Whether the reader relates the poem to H.D.’s relationship with her father or to her feminist standpoint, whichever background he or she chooses to connect to Hilda Doolittle’s personal life, one can certainly grasp the idea that in H.D.’s opinion, chaos from the natural winds and Mother Nature is clearly more beautiful than manmade perfection. Just like life, the beauty portrayed on the outside is nowhere as important as natural beauty and mayhem.

Layla Torres
B.A. of Science in English