Custom «Virginia Wolfs and Alice Walker» Essay Paper Sample

Virginia Wolfs, "Rooms of Ones Own" is an essay that shows feminist thought through exploring women literature history through unconventional explore of materials of social and conditions that are important in writing literature. According to Virginia wolfs in her book the room of ones own, she say that initially, there were no great women literature as women had no education as she describe the plights that Shakespeare's sister underwent. Even after being bright, she was not allowed to access education. The same lack of women literature was contributed to lack of income to women, lack of privacy as most of their live was influenced by their parents and failure to have experience in the broader world as well as lacking time to write. Nevertheless, the amount of work that has been written by the women is significantly small. In fact, she says that most of what that was known about the past women was written by men. Therefore this create a no good base about the women traditional literature as well as history of their kind.

She therefore makes a cal to women to ensure that they acquire intellectual freedom. This will make them self sufficient economically making them create women literature that will ensure that it occupies a room of its own. Through the essay, she encourages women to write about the finer part of life that in many cases have been ignored by the men. Through this, they are able to express their feelings towards the world and put across their reaction that had been surrounding them. As she write, Wolfs says that, "it is fatal to be a man or a woman pure and simple; one must be a woman-manly or woman-manly. It is fatal to ay the least stress on any grievances; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak conscious as a woman." This shows the reason that she wanted to bring about how both creatures should intermarry their behaviors to come up with literature that writers are communicating their own experiences in full perfect.

Alice walker's "in search of mothers' gardens" is an essay that talks amount the hardships that the black women succumbed throughout their time of oppression as they tried to maintain their creativity. Walkers in then attempt to explain this, she has tried to use many methods to show how black women have tried to maintain this creativity. They are seen to endure pain during this time through their creativity survival period. In her essay she quotes, " in the still heat of the post-reconstruction south, this is how they seemed to Jean Toomer: exquisite butterflies trapped in an evil honey, toiling away their lives in an era, a century, that did not acknowledge them, except at the mule of the world."

Alice walker uses Jean Toomer's view to show the way poor women were abused and ruined. He portrays this through using the term "the mule of the world." According to her, workers especially are used just like bodies or tools for work and impregnation. They are seen to have no creativity and no intelligence towards the world around them therefore this making them vulnerable towards submission and suppression. The situation that women underwent in their past never allowed them to unwind their creative thoughts and not think about art or anything other than work assigned to them. This made them to be broken away further from their creative instincts making them to be forced to forced labor. Nevertheless, even after being downtrodden by nature, the women still have that creativity in them and as Alice argues, if they can be given a chance, they can be the artist that they were meant to be.

The similarity of both theses lays in the idea of feminism that has been covered by both writers. In both books, women are seen to have been suffering from men's oppression and patriarchal mentality. In both essays, women have been struggling to ensure that they are free from their former plights. Women, in both essays have been struggling to get their freedom and their natural rights from political arena, equal education rights as well as right of expression. Both essays addresses issues that women are supposed to do to get out from the cocoon that both claims emanated from the environment that they have been put in especially by the ever reigning patriarchal mentality.

Otherwise these essays have differences in the place they were set. Alice walker's "in search of mothers' gardens" has an African setting while Virginia Wolfs, "Rooms of ones own" have an American setting though they seem to tackle the same theme. The way they the message is portrayed in both are also different with Alice giving it a poetic approach while Wolfs give it a descriptive approach.

Conclusion

According to the notion that one get from the two essays, they portrays a generation of women who would like to get free from their former sentiments. Women have started a revolution to break away the chains that have ever locked their creativity capacity to ensure that they can give their full potential as their men counterpart. Therefore, education and empowerment has been cited as the core value that will make them achieve their ever-discerning goals as has been noted in both essays. They also have shown that to achieve these goals and to express their creativity to the fullest, they need to make it happen themselves but having given the right environment to work in by men who to some extent having been very conservative.