For years women have been oppressed and kept from their true potential. Virginia Woolf and Phyllis Wheatley were both aware of these problems, and Alice Walker goes into detail by comparing the two women in In Search of our Mother’s Gardens and explaining the sacrifices her mother’s generation went through in her poem Women.
One of the main impressions from Alice Walker’s Women is the strength found within the women she describes. These women, the women of Walker’s mother’s generation, knew to be tough yet caring at the same time. Walker describes the women as having “fists as well as hands.” When needed they used their fists to fight for what they knew their children needed, but they were also able to unclench their firsts and use their …show more content…
In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Alice Walker mentions how Virginia Woolf writes about how the lack of certain luxuries restricts talented women from reaching their full potential. In order for a woman to become a well-known poet, Woolf explains that she must have a room of her own and enough money to support herself. Woolf may not have had these restrictions that she described, but she knew of them, and Walker uses Phyllis Wheatley as an example of this oppression. Wheatley acknowledges her lack of these things in her description of “the Goddess” that she called the Liberty kept from her. Despite the differences between Woolf and Wheatley, Woolf was able to distinguish the problems and Walker shows that that by comparing their “contrary instincts.”
Walker’s comparison of Wheatley and Woolf relate well to the end of Women. Walker describes her mother’s generation as talented women oppressed because of who they are and where they come from which is similar to Phyllis’s experience and Woolf’s description of women not being able to achieve stuff. All of the women recognize what is needed to be successful and acknowledged for their gifts, but they also recognize what it is like living without them. Alice Walker summed this up greatly in Women when she wrote “How they knew what we must know without knowing a page of it
One of the main impressions from Alice Walker’s Women is the strength found within the women she describes. These women, the women of Walker’s mother’s generation, knew to be tough yet caring at the same time. Walker describes the women as having “fists as well as hands.” When needed they used their fists to fight for what they knew their children needed, but they were also able to unclench their firsts and use their …show more content…
In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Alice Walker mentions how Virginia Woolf writes about how the lack of certain luxuries restricts talented women from reaching their full potential. In order for a woman to become a well-known poet, Woolf explains that she must have a room of her own and enough money to support herself. Woolf may not have had these restrictions that she described, but she knew of them, and Walker uses Phyllis Wheatley as an example of this oppression. Wheatley acknowledges her lack of these things in her description of “the Goddess” that she called the Liberty kept from her. Despite the differences between Woolf and Wheatley, Woolf was able to distinguish the problems and Walker shows that that by comparing their “contrary instincts.”
Walker’s comparison of Wheatley and Woolf relate well to the end of Women. Walker describes her mother’s generation as talented women oppressed because of who they are and where they come from which is similar to Phyllis’s experience and Woolf’s description of women not being able to achieve stuff. All of the women recognize what is needed to be successful and acknowledged for their gifts, but they also recognize what it is like living without them. Alice Walker summed this up greatly in Women when she wrote “How they knew what we must know without knowing a page of it