- Does a woman need money and a room of her own to produce literature?
The ability for individuals to utilize their full potential depends on the cognitive and physical factors surrounding them. Individual create ideas mentally and the resources available to physically make their ideas manifest. The history of art and literature is dominated by men who were favored by societal values and beliefs while women were discriminated in social, economic and political aspects. Women from history were made to rely on men for security and development thus labeling them an inferior gender. Woolf (106-7) argue “Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends on intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one’s own.” Gender discrimination created class differences between men and women and influenced development of one gender in economic, social and political aspects (McGinn, & Oh, 2017). Women lacked the material capacity to develop their intellectual capacity because the society had do structures to support women.
Women need freedom to acquire economic, social and political status to enable them writes poems and songs. These factors influence women to develop positive perceptions about their capabilities and place in the society. Lorde argues that the skills are within women but they do not have cognitive and physical power to exploit them because the society limited their ability to access them. Lorde says, “For within structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were meant to kneel to thought as we were meant to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets” (2). When women access equality through money and property, they become independent and free to express their feelings through literature materials such as poetry.
- Read through the quotes, and propose your own essay.
Women development in literature and art is considered to have been influenced by gender and class values created by the society. Lorde however argues, “The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the implementation of that freedom. However, experience has taught us that the action in the now is also always necessary. Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours” (2). Women were therefore limited by the society because they developed mental chains through which they thought themselves as weak and incapable of literature expression through books and poems. Maybe what women needed is a voice and conviction that they were more valuable than what they were meant to believe.
Women believe about the society and social roles define their behavior and actions. Study conducted by McGinn and Oh (2017) indicated that power and status in the society was affected by women beliefs on what they should engage in within the society. Woolf argues that, “[A] woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (4). These kind of believe according to McGinn and Oh (2017) limits the woman’s power to write poems and books. The beliefs also shaped their actions and behavior and perceived their roles as important for their future. Women according to Wittig (1993, 103) women can choose what they want to become because they are not defined by the society. Women were therefore not limited by gender and class details but by their belief that they needed social recognition to become poets and writers.
References
Wittig, M. (1993). One is not born a woman. The lesbian and gay studies reader, 103-109. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lUe7JihCoBQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA103&dq=Monique+Wittig+&ots=LGO186ZPxP&sig=jrcv0IIDli5xNlCR2ssov5JbcSQ
McGinn, K. L., & Oh, E. (2017). Gender, social class, and women’s employment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 84-88. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X17301008