Essay on The Publishing Career of Isabella Whitney

The next expressive woman known during the renaissance era was Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf was raised in a very educated home with a great privilege to be a freethinking woman. She began writing her own novel very young, and had written many more popular modernist titles such as “To The Lighthouse” and “Mrs. Dalloway.” Woolf had many opportunities available to her that many women of her day were not; she studied many different languages and went to college for four years. Virginia Woolf believed that women had little or no say in their future; she wanted to use her education and social connections to make a voice in the world where women unfortunately had none.

“A Communication which the Author had to London, Before She made Her Will” features Isabella Whitney’s reasons for leaving London (and in doing so vocalizes her frustrations with the city). The poem acts as a preface to Whitney’s “The Manner of Her Will..”, which was written as a satire that involved bequeathing parts of London she does not own to Londoners. It is arguable to say that these works contained a certain degree of autobiographical material because she lived among the common people. Isabella Whitney pioneered her field of women poets. While a lot of her practices (familiar allusions, exaggerations, ballad metre) were common for contemporary male authors of the mid-sixteenth century, as a woman she was setting a new precedent. “A Communication…” is successful for several reasons: it plays on the complaint genre and in doing so personifies London as a poor lover, it skillfully uses language, and it follows with Whitney’s credit motif (autobiographical in nature).

A critical point in European history was the Renaissance period, which took place between 1300-1700. The term Renaissance stands for ‘rebirth’, and in this context refers to the increased interest that was taken in learning from Greek and Roman classical writing. Recent exploration by historians into the Renaissance period has seen a fixation on the discussion of the role of gender during the Renaissance. A variety of historians, such as Joan Kelly and Merry E. Weisner, believe that women didn’t experience any form of a Renaissance during this period. It can be widely acknowledged that during this period society did experience a ‘rebirth’, especially in terms of the role of the men in Europe. Women, on the other hand, weren’t as fortunate.

Two-hundred years is a sizeable gap of time that allows plenty of room for change. American society had been rapidly changing from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, but despite this, the roles and rights of women have remained locked in place. There were many factors to consider as to why women were not allowed to flourish in their time and exceed these boundaries, and while some accepted it, there were many that opposed and faced these difficulties head on. Two female authors, one from colonial times, and one from nineteenth century America, have written about the obstacles and misogyny they’ve overcome in a male dominated literary career. Despite the two-hundred-year gap between the lives of Margaret Fuller and Anne Bradstreet, they both face issues regarding the static stereotype that women are literarily inferior and subservient handmaids to men.

In American history there have been many truly extraordinary women. These women range from all different time periods, races and other backgrounds. Over the years women have participate or become involved in multiple different themes including: politics, midwives or physicians, inventors, literary or arts figures, feminists, suffrage or equal rights activist, wealthy women, academics, fighters- physical or metaphorical etc. This paper will exemplify three special women, all the while providing background, some life achievements and details of their last years. These women are Ida Wells, Isabella Baumfree (A.K.A Sojourner Truth) and Harriet Tubman. All African American abolitionist who fought endlessly for the civil rights owed to them as Americans, free citizens and humans.

There once lived a woman named Bessie Wright who lived in Thompson Georgia. She lived with a family of 4 . Mom, dad, and 1 sister who was 5 at the time. Bessie Wright was born on May 5, 1816 in Thompson GA. She lived slightly poor. Her mom was a stay at home mom she wasn’t allowed to work . Her dad worked as a stableman. His job was to clean up after the horses and make sure the saddles were ready for the riders. Bessie did not work because she was too young, so she just stayed at home and played with the animals that were around the house.

She used her poems to write about her faith and her advocacy for freedom. She writes about being taken away from her parents, “What sorrows labor in my parent’s breast?” (403) and in another poem,

‘Who is Ida B. Wells?’ Some people could say she was a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother. Some could even say she was simply just another human being. However, this does not answer the question of why students continue to learn about her to this day. Perhaps, the more appropriate question to propose is: ‘Who was Ida B. Wells and why is she so significant in American history?’

In Virginia Woolf’s short essay, Shakespeare’s Sister (1928), she explores the misogynistic world’s effect on women artists from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Depicted through an imaginary sister of Shakespeare, and her own experiences, Woolf explains how “in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist.” Instead, women were deemed of no value beyond the home or child bearing (Jacobus 702). Such gender issues have emerged in every facet of our society, primarily concentrating on gender equality in areas like education, status, awareness, and availing of socio-economic opportunities. In today’s context, with an overall look at history, in comparison to men, women remain relatively more constrained by

The Renaissance was a time of enlightenment and discovery around the world. There were many advancements in culture, art, and science. An interesting area to look at for this period would be the advancements made based on gender. Historically, women do not always have a significant impact on their culture, and they do not always have the same standing as their male counterparts. Margaret L. King and Joan Kelly-Gadol delve deeper into the issue of gender advancements during the Renaissance when they analyze the issue of whether women and men benefitted equally during this period.

Throughout history, female artists have not been strangers to harsh criticism regarding their artistic works. Some female artists are fortunate to even receive such criticism; many have not achieved success in sharing their works with the world. In Virgina Woolf’s third chapter of her essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf addresses the plight of the woman writer, specifically during the Elizabethan time period of England. Woolf helps the reader appreciate her view on how stifling and difficult this time period was for women and how what little creativity emerged would have been distorted in some way. Through a number of claims, examples and other literary techniques, Woolf is able to

this point in time, as they were believed to be inferior to men. The works of female authors were not as

“Thinking about Shakespeare’s sister,” resonated how women were treated and how their opportunities differ from that of a man. Virginia Woolf tries to boil down the main cause of why there are not any great women authors. Is it because women do not have the ability to be or raw talent great writers? Woolf’s essay examines the life of William Shakespeare’s sister to answer this question: What kind of life would have Judith lead? Judith is a fictional character created from Virginia Woolf’s imagination.

The controversy surrounding Emily Dickinson is her odd lifestyle and her tendencies to be somewhat of a recluse. She is sometimes considered abnormal because she does things differently from most others. She spends much of her life dressed in white and withdrawn from much of society. Of course, her peers take this negatively, but what they do not understand is that her being so private is more of a meditation to her, instead of a hiding. She just wants to escape the pressures she feels are normally required of women. She does not want to be a servant to sick and elderly. She feels she has more potential for her mind to grow, and those obligations would just be hindrances to her writing (McQuade 1255). Her childhood and her staying out of society as an adult, along with many other aspects known and not known, influence her poems and the style in which she goes about writing the works. Her techniques of writing are completely different from any other writer, whether prose or poetry. Dickinson composes her phrases by marking them off with a dash, placing a space before and after. This small maneuver places more emphasis on her “impress of the mind in its analysis of experience” (McQuade 1256). Her slant thymes and unique form of expression produces more of an oddness to the audience.

From Enheduanna to Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte to J.K. Rowling. Woman have proved over and over again that the role of author and/or writer can suit females just as much as any man. Mansfield encouraged women to write and used herself as an example with her own writing to try to attract more female authors. Often, women are pictures as just people who birth babies, cook, clean, shopped and stayed around as house wives. Sometimes, they did not have a wide span of education. Even in the early 1900’s women didn’t often go to college, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that women began to attend college in equal numbers to men. Poet laureate Robert Southey said “Literature cannot be the business of a women’s life.” One of the key assumptions that Mansfield and other women modernists faced was the habit of presenting narrative fiction through male eyes and according to male values. Mansfield herself strived for everyone (not limited to just women) to do whatever they wanted. She encouraged people to break rules and branch out.