Women in Literature
The Arizona Territory was a beautiful and impressive area that deserved to have exquisite writings to represent the land. It was particularly the men who were allowed to publish their thoughts. Women’s writings were not looked upon as scholarly and not published for public enjoyment. In the late 1800's and early 1900's women's literature was underrepresented. The ideas of women and their creativity was discouraged. In Southern Arizona, this discouragement existed for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons attributed to this was that there were more limiting resources, an overabundance of women who were illiterate, and geography. Despite these and other stumbling blocks, two women overcame the odds and are seen as great women authors and literary achievers. Sharlot Hall and Frances Gillmor proved that women had a great deal to convey and exhibited the talent of literary expertise to accomplish their goals. Not only do they write about beauty and harmony, they write about the conflicts with the Indians and the hardships that other cultures had to endure in Arizona.
One reason that few women published literature was because they came to Arizona primarily with their husbands who were in the Army and needed to relocate. These women, who came from populated and larger cities, were exposed to a different way of life in Arizona. There were few educational facilities in the west to teach young ladies about literary traditions. A lot of these women had to take care of themselves, their children, growing food and teaching. They were rooted to the same spot, sometimes for months at a time. This deprived them of a lot of mental stimuli that may have gotten in more populated areas.(1 pg. 48) Therefore sheltered women in Arizona were not encouraged to write stories or poems. Not that they didn’t know how, they told stories all the time. Children loved to hear the stories of their mothers lives and backgrounds. Women just never knew there was a medium to get their work out, so that more than just their children were partial to stories and poems of landscapes and journeys across many different lands.
There is a wealth of information about Ms. Sharlot Hall. Her life was very complex and together it all ties together to tell the story of her fame.
Davidson, Cathy N. and Linda Wagner-Martin. The Oxford Companion to Womenâs Writing In The United States. New York: Oxford United Press, 1995.
Gloria Naylor has endeavored to overcome the obstacles that accompany being an African-American woman writer. In her first three novels, The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, and Mama Day, Naylor succeeds not only in blurring the boundary between ethnic writing and classical writing, but she makes it her goal to incorporate the lives of African-Americans into an art form with universal appeal. Gloria Naylor explains this struggle by stating, "The writers I had been taught to love were either male or white. And who was I to argue that Ellison, Austen, Dickens, the Brontes, Baldwin and Faulkner weren't masters? They were and are. But inside there was still the faintest whisper: Was there no one telling my story?" (qtd. in Erickson 232). Naylor, in her quest to make the western cannon more universal, readapts the classics. By the use of allusions to the themes and structures of Shakespeare and Dante in her first three novels, Naylor revises the classics to encompass African-Americans.
Women have faced oppression in the literary community throughout history. Whether they are seen as hysterical or unreliable, women writers seem to be faulted no matter the topics of their literature. However, Anne Bradstreet and Margaret Fuller faced their critics head-on. Whether it was Bradstreet questioning her religion or Fuller discussing gender fluidity, these two women did not water down their opinions to please others. Through their writings, Bradstreet and Fuller made great strides for not just women writers, but all women.
It is worth mentioning that American confessional female poets have dwelled on this issue. From the first American poet, Anna Bradstreet to Anne Sexton, the quest for female identity has occupied an integral part in the poetic scene. In this respect, Laura Major states that Anne Bradstreet “unwittingly became the first American poet to publish poetry” (111). Belonging to the Puritan era of the seventeenth century, she has paved the way for generations of female poets, for the forthcoming centuries, to forge their own identities through poetry. The female confessional poets break the norms in poetry in terms of the thematic anchorage.
Eliza Snow was another woman who paved the way for American women today. Eliza encouraged women to start social centers and to open stores to sell their home made products such as milk, butter, yarn, and clothing. She is also famous for helping woman attend medical schools and under her influence she encouraged women to write for local newspapers and later E...
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000. Print.
Narratives such as Rowlandson’s gave a voice to women in the realm of written words, but at the cost of the Native voice. According to the website www.maryrowlandson.com,
Each one of these writers is a reflection naturally of their times but what causes their work to continue to resonate is the absolutely honest way the hardships of womanhood and colonial life inform our national demeanor. All three in their writing are trying to cope with the conditions in front of them, the perils of being a woman of their times. The heartbreak of watching their children and grandchildren die in front of them, starvation, the loss of livelihood and the ever evolving definition of having a homeland. For all three women death was a constant companion, as was God and a sense of duty to their ventures in their new lands, mostly though I see a deep kind of resilient love in their bodies of work. It is that resilient love and optimism that makes American writing, American writing.
Gilbert, S., Gubar, S. (2000) The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press. Dixon, R W (1886) Personal letters.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
Julius Gaius Caesar was born on July 12, 100 BC to the patrician parents of Gaius Caesar and Aurelia Cotta. Even though he was born patrician, he considered himself from a young age as part of the popularis in order to gain their support. This assisted him in gaining more support once he became a political power in the future. Caesar’s father died which made Caesar the head of the household at only 16 years old. And in order to benefit the household, Caesar got himself nominated as the High Priest of Jupiter and eventually married Cornelia when he was 18. Unfortunately, when Sulla declared himself dictator he demanded Caesar to divorce Cornelia and he refused to. This angered Sulla, so he seized Caesar’s land, his wife’s dowry and his priesthood. This forced Caesar to join the Roman military since he had no way to make money. He was very successful in the military and he was given the civic crown, an award, for saving a fellow soldier in battle. For his heroics, he was promoted to the military legate to Bithynia. Sulla soon died after this and Caesar returned to Rome. In Rome, he became a successful speaker as an orator, or lawyer. He was a natural born speaker and would later use his talent to his advantage.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
The Portrayal of Women in American Literature Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different way than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may have represented his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays her as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, the main female character, Daisy Buchanan, is portrayed by, Nick, the narrator, only by her superficial qualities.
Us female literature originated around 1880s. Its primarily concern was to fight for suffrage, female education rights along with advocating abolitionism of slavery, temperance , socialism and reforms in…..
Many female writers see themselves as advocates for other creative females to help find their voice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing.