Women's bodies have represented concepts and institutions since Western thought envisioned a New World. Reaching back to Pocahontas and further, a brief history of the use of the female form in paintings and statues explains some of the reasons behind America's obsession with female representations of freedom.
A brief history of male gendered icons of America--the nation, the government, and the common man--gives another perspective on both the creation of these symbols and their role in the shaping of cultural identity.
Recalling the political agendas shaping the evolution of both the Statue of Liberty and Lady Freedom brings us one step further toward appreciating the layers of meaning emanating from both statues.
Both Lady Freedom and the Statue of Liberty were born on foreign soil. The stories of their journeys to the United States evoke coincidental yet ironic parallels to the plight of other first-generation Americans.
The United States may erect or endorse enormous monuments to freedom, but do these statues evoke anything close to reality? As women and African Americans found themselves shut out from the America's conception of freedom over the past century, Lady Freedom or the Statue of Liberty could become painfully ironic symbols of what was wrong with the United States, instead of what was right.
The following poems voice succinctly and sometimes poignantly the way Lady Liberty's image has been understood by varying groups of new and old Americans, serving as introductions to larger issues of immigration, patriotism, nationalism and apathy.
By giving voice to the stoic and silent Statue of Liberty, Lazarus epitomizes how Jewish Americans and other immigrants hoped to shape their new country.
A xenophobic poem of the effects of open-door immigration, an expression of the fears of many white nationalists at the turn of the century.
Published first in the Congressional Record, Cox's poem pays a glorifying tribute to the tenets of American democracy seemingly instilled within the statue of Lady Freedom.
Endowing Lady Freedom with strength and resoluteness, Dove imagines her as witness to a city of decay and conflict, but also to the indelible human will to carry on. Dove's poem synthesizes both glorifications and ironicizations of Freedom, proving in the process that representations of women do not have to render them mere objects.
The Statue of Liberty and Lady Freedom may have been intended to offer one, overarching ideal. Their significance instead lies in their ability to be interpreted differently over time, offering Americans a look at how varied and dynamic their own interpretations can be.