Girl By Jamaica Kincaid, Virginia Woolf, And Alice Walker

Yet, in this presentation of logic, there is a great deal of pathos tied in as well. Women have fought hard for the right to have their own place to live and here she recognizes the tremendous achievement that they have won for themselves, while not downplaying the obstacles that they are yet to face. Virginia Woolf uses all three appeals and often ties them together to better get her point across.

In the quote, Woolf is discussing the confidence of women. Since the job of a woman is basically to be inferior to men, women are losing confidence. Women are constantly struggling to do what they want as they require, “gigantic courage and strength”. Wolf believes that men have purposefully made women inferior in order to reinforce their own confidence. Thus, this lack of confidence not only led to lack of quality life for women but also led to a lack of writing. However, even with this lack confidence women continue to persist and do everything they can to write. Woolf believes that if women did have more money and confidence, then they would not have to be so inferior and get married to men so early on. Woolf believes she could have done what she wanted as she would have been financially stable and not be reliant on others. Thus, Woolf could have been the boss of herself with freedom and time. With this freedom and time, Woolf and other women could have had the opportunities to produce the works they wanted to and get it published.

The article, The Cult of Womanhood: 1820 - 1860 written by Barbara Welter discusses the philosophy towards women in America during the mid 19th century. A set of demands and expectations based upon four principles: piety, purity, submission and domesticity were placed on women as well as certain behavioral expectations left 19th century women feeling guilty. It also left women feeling this way during the industrialization period as well as having a huge presence of incompatibility with society. Welter shares her viewpoint that the Cult of Womanhood was an attempt to preserve pre modern values in the industrial age. Men held a dominant place in society and continued to prevent new opportunities for women to explore. Narrow minded

For centuries, women have had the role of being the perfect and typical house wife; needs to stay home and watch the children, cook for husbands, tend to the laundry and chores around the house. In her short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid provides a long one sentence short story about a mother giving specific instructions to her daughter but with one question towards the end, with the daughter’s mother telling her daughter if she had done all the instructions to become a so called “perfect” woman, every man would want her. Kincaid’s structuring in “Girl,” captures a demanding and commanding tone. This short story relates to feminist perspectives. The mother expects a great deal from her daughter to have a certain potential and she does not hesitate to let her daughter understand that. As a matter of fact, the story is about two pages long, made into one long sentence - almost the whole time the mother is giving her daughter directions to follow - conveys a message to the reader that the mother demands and expects great potential in her daughter. The daughter is forced to listen and learn from what her mother is telling her to do to become the perfect housewife. Throughout the story, Kincaid uses the symbols of the house and clothing, benna and food to represent the meanings of becoming a young girl to a woman and being treated like one in society. Women are portrayed to appeal to a man to become the ideal woman in society, while men can do anything they please.

The woman's husband, John, treats her like a prisoner in her own home because of her postpartum depression. She feels that she has very little freedom of thought or action because John dictates the course of her life as though he were a prison guard. She has internalized her husband’s authority to the point she hears John's voice in her head. The narrator states, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus-but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house”(Gilman 2). The narrator starts to keep a secret journal because of this captivity, this writing is the only emotional stimulus the woman can forgo to express herself freely. She says, “I must not let them find me writing” (Gilman 3). In a metaphorical sense, the woman finds herself trapped by her condition and the patriarchal society in which she lives. Both prevent her from asserting her independence as a women. In a physical sense, she finds herself confined to a room of John’s choosing. All she can do is obsess over the wallpaper. The narrator says, “I am getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper” (Gilman 7). Eventually, when she sees the creeping women in the wallpaper,the narrator gains a measure of freedom when she tears it all down, thus

"Women's Voices in Stories by Raymond Carver" In the article "Women's Voices by Raymond Carver," the author Marshall Bruce Gentry explains how Carver attempts to write in a woman's voice. Gentry argues that most authors "male and female . . . tend to have strongly empathetic feelings toward the opposite sex," allowing them to portray their "fears and faults" into the characters (86). During Gentry's interview with Carver, Carver admits that he felt his writing of a woman's voice would be restricted.

Gail Godwin’s “A Sorrowful Woman” represents the feminist thoughts of a woman oppressed by a male dominated society. In this society crated by Godwin, a woman’s role is as a homemaker, however the main character refuses to accept the role given to her. The woman withdrawals from her family and reality until she finally cannot handle it anymore and kills herself. Through the use of character development, Godwin is effectively able to shine light to how one could oppress a female through the hidden familial problems in what appears to be a happy marriage.

The first major point made by Woolf in A Room of One’s Own is synonymous with the essay’s thesis. Woolf first introduces this theme in the beginning of her essay: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (4). The concept of a woman needing to possess finances and an individual space is recurrent throughout the book. To Woolf, this idea is tantamount to obtaining freedom. During the era in which Woolf lived and set A Room of One’s Own, women faced various limitations that stripped them of their ability to find true creative liberation. With so much of their time spent in the house and no access to finances, women struggled to find separation from the home. Thus, Woolf’s emphasis on money and a room symbolizes the separation and freedom

In her article “Isabella Whitney and the Female Legacy” (1991), Wendy Wall examines the effect that early female writers had on breaking gender barriers in 16th century England. Wall specifically focuses on the impact of Isabella Whitney’s writings during a period during which women still struggled to achieve independence and power in a dominating patriarchal system. In this article, Wall credits Whitney for overcoming the many obstacles women faced in their attempts to become published writers, and truly creating a legacy for women throughout history with her efforts.

Lucy, the eponymous character of Jamaica Kincaid’s second novel, moves from Antigua to New York not in an arbitrary move, but in a calculated effort to explore her latent queer sexuality and gradually escape the gendered labor of her homeland. By working as an au pair for an upper class white woman named Mariah, Lucy trades birthing labor for domestic labor in a move that initially seems lateral, but serves as a potential gateway to freedom from caretaking that would have been inaccessible in Antigua. Unbridled from her mother, the American Lucy has opportunities to explore her sexuality without being deemed promiscuous, and has the ability to live with a woman she can have intimate relations with. Lucy has continuously disobeyed the performative prescriptions of heteronormativity in her life, but, as explained by the work of Rosamund King, her transgressions in Antigua are rendered invisible by a culture that believes women are incapable of sexual agency. America acknowledges Lucy’s transgressions against heteronormativity, which lets her explore sexuality and gradually escape the obligations of gendered work. Lucy is escaping the obligations delineated by female performance.

Virginia Woolf’s passage in A Room of One’s Own does a nice job showing how word choice and splashes of imagery can take an opinion from just a statement to something that can be visualized and impactful to others. By using good word choice and imagery, Woolf was able to show the emotional, physical, and mental toll others had on creative women.

‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf, is a feminist text. It is an extended essay, written in a fictional form, however although this book is narrated by a fictional character and narrative, it highlights and discusses the non-fictional reality of women being subordinate to men. The fictional character “I” narrates the books main topic of women and fiction; "Call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please, it is not a matter of any importance", this indicates the authors desperation of getting the message across as it is of most importance, and the lack of significance of the narrator who does so. Woolf’s books theme discusses the

In her essay, “Professions for Women”, Virginia Woolf concentrates on the struggle with women for social and economic equality. Virginia Woolf addresses a group of women wanting to become writers, and emphasizes breaking away from the conventions society has for women¬-—to be “sympathetic, tender, pure” (Woolf 2) and “never let anybody guess that they have a mind of their own” (Woolf 2). Woolf explains how men will continue to “condemn such freedom in women” (Woolf 4) unless they fearlessly assert themselves otherwise. One of Woolf’s main motifs is the Angel in the House.

A Room of One’s Own is a novel written by Virginia Woolf. In the story, Woolf is arguing that women need money, privacy, and education to write successfully. Throughout her essay, she analyzes several different female figures from the past and during her own time to give her argument leverage. One of these figures is a fictional character named Judith Shakespeare, a sister to William Shakespeare. Even though Judith is fictional, she is necessary to A Room of One’s Own.

2. The original occasion of a “ A Room Of One’s Own” was to describe “Women and what they are like; … women and the fiction that they write; or women and the fiction that is written about them.(Woolf, 3). Woolf addresses women as her audience, and follows to a great extent the advices she intend them to follow.