Alice Walker's 1983 publication In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose addresses the role of creativity in women's lives. Creativity is the essence of womanhood, and therefore a symbol like that of the titular mother's garden. "Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and respect for strength-in search of my mother's garden, I found my own."(Walker 675). Imagery of gardens and life contrasts sharply with imagery of abuse and death, which Walker acknowledges in Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Both the suppression or repression of creativity, and the stimulation and expression of creativity, are critical components of women's lives. Creativity is the means by which women of color have mitigated their oppression and subjugation. On page 357, Walker states, "I went in search of the secret of what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that the black woman has inherited, and that pops out in wild and unlikely places to this day." The imagery of popping...
Yet the garden flourishes. What Walker likely means is that the contributions of African-American women to dominant culture have been viewed and treated like weeds; the women themselves have been treated like invasive species to be clipped out and cut away. Yet the weeds still grow, no matter what the political motivations of the pruner. The garden of creativity grows, even when its plants, the weeds of self-expression, are stigmatized or labeled as unwanted. Women's creativity has been like "butterflies trapped in honey," notes Walker (232). It was for generations -- centuries -- illegal for women of color to express themselves. Their buried impulses have become the seeds of creativity for modern women. This is why Walker notes that the grandmothers who made sacrifices have "not perished," (235).
Conflict The sacred notions of love held by Janie are dashed when she is compelled into a marriage that was not based on love and she rushed into a second marriage in order to escape from her first marriage. Janie's first marriage hit the rocks as a result of not having feelings for the man (Logan Killicks).She married Logan Killicks after being pressurized by Nanny. Janie got married to second man
Her blooming full-pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the never-read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing from the daylight. (Eliot, XXVIII) However it is worth noting the implicit paradox expressed here in the notion of a married woman's "oppressive liberty." Dorothea Brooke marries sufficiently well
Internet: Privacy for High School Students An Analysis of Privacy Issues and High School Students in the United States Today In the Age of Information, the issue of invasion of privacy continues to dominate the headlines. More and more people, it seems, are becoming victims of identity theft, one of the major forms of privacy invasion, and personal information on just about everyone in the world is available at the click of
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now