Black Women of Our Past essays

Black Women of Our Past essays Since the beginning of time, men were considered superior over women. Women were not educated. Many of them did not even have chances to express their creativity. Alice Walker addresses that issue in her essay "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens." In the essay, Walker created images of the stifled women with stories from other writers and her mothers'. One of the reasons women did not have chances to express their creativity is that men did not consider women's work as good as the men's, thus women in the past trying to make a living from art was impossible. Virginia Wolf, a British writer who wrote about women's struggle as artists in the 1920s. In one of Wolfs most recognized works, "A Room of One's Own," she states that in order for a woman make a living as an artist, she must have two things: "a room of her own (with keys and lock) and enough money to support herself." (Walker 742) Women were oppressed so much in the past, Wolf wrote that: any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill and psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift of poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by contrary instinc ts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. (Walker 742) Wolf wrote that about the women in the sixteenth century in England, but Walker showed that the same problem still existed during her mother's period as she transposed Wolfs words any black woman or anyone born or made a slave would have certainly gone crazed...For it needs little skill and psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift of poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by contrary instincts, chains, guns, the lash, the ownership of one's body ...