These were the duties of an ordinary woman, which were taught to young girls from an early age. In “Finishing School” Angelou narrates her story and says that she spent the years of her girlhood in ‘learning the mid-Victorian values with very little money to indulge them” (Finishing School para.1). They were taught “embroidery”, “iron”, “wash”, “setting tables’, “baking roasts” and “cooking vegetables” from an early age, so that they are prepared to undertake the duties efficiently when they are married off. Such a life is “A Plagued Journey” for a woman, where she lives a life expecting freedom and enfranchisement from the cruelties dawned upon her by man. However, this hope stays until “darkness comes to reclaim her” (“A Plagued Journey”
