Analysis of Two Writings: The Yellow Wallpaper and Memory, Creation, and Writing

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The writings I chose to analyze and relate to each other within this assignment are two pieces, which were written by two very different women. The first essay, I would like to introduce is an article written by Toni Morrison, which was published in the New York magazine "Thought" in 1984. In "Memory, Creation, and Writing", Morrison inspects and analyzes what driving force is necessary in order for a writer to be able to unfold his/her creativity to its highest potential. She states techniques and strategies, which she has found helpful throughout her development to a world -renowned writer. Within this paper, I intend to apply these strategies to "The Yellow Wallpaper" -a " fictional" story, written by Charlotte Gilman in 1900. This story describes the oppression Gilman feels, as a woman who is confined by the gender- stereotypical roles and expectations laid upon her by her husband. She gives voice to her feelings of imprisonment and delusion, by using images she perceives in the wallpaper in her room as metaphors of the repressed aspects of her life, which she is unable to express to her husband and confront herself with directly.

In her essay "Memory, Creation, and Writing", Toni Morrison explains the motivations and insights behind the creative process of writing, which she has explored over the course of forty years. The first important point she explains is that within any piece of creative writing, the writer must rely on his/her memory to stimulate his/her imagination. Morrison states clearly that within this process of recalling an event, it is the subjective emotional identification of the writer that is important; factual information is secondary and oftentimes not even desired. In her opinion, it is necessary that the writer collects fragments of his/her memory about a given event, and states that " the process by which the recollections of these pieces coalesce into a part (and knowing the difference between a piece and a part) is creation" (Morrison, p.386).

She continues this idea, by claiming that within this context, it is important for the writer to examine the specific milieu in which the scene takes place, and what feelings and impressions it evokes. She defines the term memory as being "the deliberate act of remembering [which] is a form of willed creation" (Morrison, p.

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