الفهرس 
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Abstract
This dissertation mainly explores in detail the feminist aspects in the poetry of three eminent American woman poets, namely, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton and Elizabeth Bishop in the light of the feminist movement. The momentum and scope that the feminist activism has gained throughout its history, especially during the second half of the twentieth century, attracted many female writers to contribute to gender-oriented issues. In their writing, particularly poetry, Rich, Sexton and Bishop, in different ways, have tremendously offered creative and innovative ideas and thoughts to the principles and philosophy of the feminist movement. Rich adopts a radical feminist view where traditional society should be restructured, Sexton exposes women’s oppression and man’s hegemony through the lens of her personal experience, while Bishop remains a quiet and contemplative observer; her feminism is a kind of a covert, coded and costumed one. However, they all strive for a better life replete with love, respect, freedom, equality and hope for women who have been pushed into the margins of a male-dominated society’s experience. Rich, Sexton and Bishop realize that women cannot fulfill their aspirations unless the tradition-bound society in which they live is substantially changed, and all have been influenced by the notion that women, collectively, assume roles and identity shaped and sustained by the power of men. These feminist writers struggle hard for self-definition and for establishing a more recognized and separate identity. They use poetry as a forum to state and restate the reversionary positions from which they speak and struggle to find a new diction that may express their sense of oppression and the need to revolt against values and traditions that glamorize male-centeredness and perpetuate the supremacy of patriarchy. Their poetry thrives because it struggles to find language that construct ideal selves and visionary societies and they believe that new constructions must respond to women’s real political and social capabilities and diverse needs. Their poetry forms the light within which they predict hopes and dreams toward change and survival. They measure their poetic diction not only on the basis of its political and social efficacy, not simply in terms of its music, but in relation to its capacity to illuminate reality and to help them realize their wish for more. Moreover, their poems poignantly reveal how women are oppressed and persecuted by a cruel male-dominated society. Finally, these poets show their quest for a new society with a different set of values and ethics that give women a new role and a new respected identity defined within the feminist boundaries, not the patriarchal ones.