women and writing

A detailed Summary of women and writing

Midterm Assignment : Women and writing

Since the beginning of times, human beings have found various ways to express themselves and more specifically how to declare their feelings and emotions. We all know that art (in a general term) is supposed to be the tool used for expression. People from different communities, cultural backgrounds, and religions, have been appealed to manifest and share their uniqueness through art. Art, whether it was music, painting, sculpting or writing has been highly censured through time because of its contents of truth. The majorities of a society did not allow minorities to fully express themselves with fear of manifestations and revolts . Women, as a minority have fought to tell the truth. In order to understand better the meaning of Women's writing, we will first analyze the factors that pushed women to write, then we will go over the obstacles that women encountered and finally, we will discuss what the writers wanted to achieve through their writing.

"There are writers who need to make sense of the world they live"(Dorothy Allison, Trash, p.19.) This sentence shows that the writer needed to write to see and understand herself through writing. Th

The search of an understanding was the factor that pushed Bell Hooks to write "I began to feel uncertain, displaced, estranged even, this was the condition of my spirit when I decided to be a writer, to seek for that light in words" (Bell Hooks, remembered ruptures, p.15) after that she declares "Searching for a space were writing could be understood, I asked for a diary" (Bell Hooks, remembered ruptures, p.15.) Writing was a way to understand herself a little like Dorothy Allison, a way to look at one's own person in a global manner, from a different angle, in other words, a way to be objective about oneself 'situation.

Whether women write for themselves or for others, the main matter is that they write for an urge of understanding. There is a clear desire of comprehension.

In her paper "A Room of One's Own", Virginia Woolf wonders ironically "why women are poor?" She then tells us that it would have been near to impossible for a woman of that era to be wealthy. Women couldn't do anything else than have children and be submissive housewives, "Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children-no human being could stand it" (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, p.22.) And even if women had been able to earn money, they could not keep it until 1870. Unable to keep her money, a woman gives up the idea to earn it, and so , she confirms her idea that her natural place is in the house. This last idea was (and still is) adopted in most of the places of the world. Most of the world's societies have defined women as a housekeeper. But how could this endanger their ability to write? It could be said that if women are "doomed" to stay home taking care of the house, their business is nowhere else. Men do not want to be invaded in the workplace, so women stay home. Also staying home could just as well include writing at home. But we all know that only about sixty years ago, reading was profaned for women. A women literate was the devil incarnated. This was probably set that way because we know that reading and writing both develop the ability to think in a critical manner, and again, men did not want to have rivals in that sector. Maybe Woolf tried to warn us in her paper since she declared that women need a room of their own to be able to write. To be able to write, women needed a material and financial independence. Apparently, the major obstacle to women's writing was the presence, influence and domination of men.

Since

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Approximate Word count = 1642
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English