Women's Literary Tradition

 Word Count: 275 Writing Women's Lives      The documentary, Writing Women's Lives , exemplifies all the experiences women writers draw from to create their works. Each of the women came from different backgrounds that lead to their works being simultaneously unique and relatable. This documentary also showed the direct effect of the feminist movement on art during this time. One can see the drastic shift from previous works by women before the feminist movement and the ones born out of feminism. This new age of writing means the reader must adapt the lens they read certain works through. Older pieces are now seen as feminist works, even though the values are not similar to the ones the author held. This brings into consideration a new question: should the pieces be used as feminist propaganda, or should they be read as the author intended? Basically, is the reader allowed to find extraneous meaning from these works? The answer depends on the reader.      For younger readers, i

 Word Count: 254 "Caged Bird" and "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou     These poems both depict the struggles of Maya Angelou, and how she dealt with them. The first poem, "Caged Bird," describes the feeling of being trapped. She juxtaposes stanzas depicting a free bird flying in the sky with a bird in a cage. This shows what it felt like to be a black woman during this era. She was watching white women excel, especially through the feminist movement, but she was still trapped by her race. The poem states. "his wings were clipped and / his feet are tied / so he opens his throat to sing" (Angelou). The bird's singing represents Angelou writing poetry. It is her way of matching the freedom of everyone else. It is her way of feeling as free as a bird flying.     The second poem, "Phenomenal Woman," shows Angelou's strength. This poem is the first we have read in this class that one can truly see the themes of the feminist movement

 Word count: 262 "Harlem Slang" by Zora Neale Hurston "All you did by rolling out early was to stir your stomach up. That made you hunt for more dishes to dirty. the longer you slept, the less you had to eat" (Hurston, 1). "Go ahead, Bedbug! Touch me! And I'll holler like a pretty white woman!" (Hurston, 6)     These quotations describe society during the time when Zora Neale Hurston wrote "Harlem Slang." The first quotation speaks to the struggles of poverty. The lower classes knew how to last the day by eating as little as possible because food was too much money for some. Here, Hurston describes the technique where people attempt to lay in bed for as long as possible in the morning so they can eat fewer meals. Later in the story, the narrator mentions that Sweet Black had not eaten since the day before. They were so desperate for sustenance that men prostituted themselves to women. This is also almost unheard of change in the power dynamic

 Word Count: 254 "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (Gilman, 3). "It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous" (Gilman, 3). "And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so" (Gilman, 8).     "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman with severe Postpartum Depression. This first quote demonstrates that no one, even her husband, understands what she is going through. They, at this time, do not think giving birth to a child is a reason to suffer, and it is possible that if they know she was suffering from the baby, they would think her more "insane." The second quote illustrates that her illness, which her husband has moved her away