Final Blog Post: The Importance of women in history, relationships, education, their bodies, self-identity, progress, and expression

As the semester come to an end, I reflect on the certain aspects that are important to women in history, relationships, education, their bodies, self-identity, progress, and expression. While being enrolled in English 217 Women and Literature course, the students were assigned a number of novels to read during the semester. All of the novels dealt with women overcoming certain situations and finding their true self identity. Each novel show prime examples of strong women who express feelings about their intelligence, physical traits, inner identity, and the way they carry themselves. Through certain experiences, the women in these novels are able to get a better sense of self, who they are, and their role as women.

            Education seems to play a big part in women lives. In one particular novel that I have read this semester education was very important for a certain woman. For example, In the book “In The Time of The Butterflies” A  Mirabal sister and also one of the main characters Minerva wanted to go to law school and prove to the people in her nation that women can be successful in obtaining a higher education. Being the only female allowed to go to law school Minerva was able to successfully finish but was not being able to get her degree. “Here we all thought El Jefe had relented against our family and let Minerva enroll in law school. But really what he was planning all along was to let her study for five whole years only to render that degree useless in the end.” Education was limited to women in this novel because the only thing women were expected to do was be house wives and have babies. Even though Minerva did start a family of her own, she was still able to get an education. Women in this novel were deprived from their education because of their gender. Minerva rebelled against these limitations and proved that women are intelligent people who are able to do a lot more than expected.

            A women’s body is very important, Eve Ensler expresses how important a woman’s body is in the novel “The Vagina Monologues.” Ensler explores the deeper and inner thoughts on how women feel about their own vagina. Ensler made a women’s vagina more important than anyone has ever thought it to be. She used women’s personal stories to show how women felt about their vaginas. For example, “My first and only husband hated hair. He said it was cluttered and dirty. He made me shave my vagina.” Through the experiences of other women, Ensler tries to show the appreciation that women should have for their vaginas. Ensler shows the fact that having a vagina isn’t easy but it is what makes us a woman and women should appreciate it and their bodies.

            Identity seems to be something that women sometimes have trouble finding. For instance, in the novels “Fun Home” and “Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” both characters have trouble finding their true identities. Both main characters Bechdel and Allison tried to rebel against living up to the stereotypes and standards that their parents lived by. Bechdel did not want to hide her sexuality and just wanted to be true to herself unlike her father and Allison wanted to be more feminine than the women in her family ever were. Towards the end of each book, both characters ended up having certain characteristics that they resented in their parents. Women sometimes have trouble dealing with self identity because of the things that they learn and observe in their families.

Progression seems to be significant in most of the novels that I have read during this course. In the novel “PUSH” The main character Claireece Precious Jones made a lot of progression throughout the book. She works on becoming more educated and more eager to learn when she goes to the alternative school. She progressed from a woman who blamed herself for the bad things that happened to a hopeful mother who has overcome a lot. Precious shows how women can change and progress into a STRONG woman no matter how vulnerable a situation may make you.

These novels that I have read for this course have showed a lot about what is important to women. Many of these novels showed the importance of education, self identity, progression and the appreciation for ones body. This course overall expressed the significance of these concepts through novels and women experiences. In my completion of this course, I have come to see why these concepts hold much importance to women.

Similarities between “Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” & “Fun Home” (Self Identity)

After reading the book “Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” I found that the book had many similarities with the graphic novel “Fun Home”. Both novels’ not only shows images to help give detail to the story, but they both are based on family life and self identification. In the book “Fun Home” Bechdel uses comics to tell her life story, while Allison uses family photos; but both novels share the same concept.

Bechdel’s Father is the novel’s main focus. Bechdel tells her story about her father’s lack of love and affection and his trouble with finding his own identity. While as in the book “Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” Allison has trouble with not really being sure of her own identity.  In both novels, both families hide things from Bechdel and Allison which causes them to have trouble with identifying themselves in their older years. Bechdel’s family puts on a front like they are an ideal family because good image was everything. While the women in Allison’s family live into the stereotype of being housewives and baby barriers. It seems as if both families try to live up to the socials norms but fail to live up to their own self identity. In both novels, a lot of truth is hidden. Bechdel’s Father hides the truth about his sexuality and Allison’s mother hides the truth about the family and their past.

Throughout the book, both authors try their hardest to NOT become like their parents or the people in their family. Bechdel had a kind of resentment towards her father while Allison had the same feeling towards her mother. Bechdel did not want to be the type of person who shut the world out and wanted to be true to herself and her sexual orientation. Allison did not want to fall into the stereotypical ideal for women but she wanted to have a sense of femininity which the women in her family lacked.  For example, “Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world had made for me.” I took this quote as Allison referring to how she will not live like the women in her family lived. Even though Bechdel and Allison wanted to be opposite from their parents, I felt after reading this book they ended up being similar to the people they were trying their hardest not to be.

The Beginning of Allison's Uncertainty

In the book “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure” the author Dorothy Allison writes about her family and the women in it. She touches on the roles women play in life and discuses the many things that are kept secret and hidden amongst her family.  Allison uses pictures to emphasize on the details she is writing about. Allison’s book is sort of a family portrait with words. Throughout the book she presents pictures of her family and herself from different years. Allison shows pictures from all different time periods. For instance, Allison has pictures of her mother in her younger and older years and she also presents pictures of herself in her older and younger years.  From reading the beginning of this short novel, I have come to learn that this book is going to speak a lot about family life.

While reading this book, I noticed that there were a lot of things that the author Allison was not sure about when it came to her family. Which brings attention to the significant of the title; she repeats the title in some parts of the book followed by a statement added on. For example, “Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.” Allison was referring to how she loves but hates her hometown Greenville, South Carolina. “Cut wet grass, split green apples, baby shit and beer bottles, cheap makeup and motor oil. Everything was ripe everything was rotting” Allison starts off with a nice imagery when describing her hometown then suddenly ends with a negative statement. This shows her uncertainty about certain things, which makes the title important to the book.

When it came to her family life, Allison shows even more uncertainty. For instance, she seemed completely oblivious to what goes on or who is who in her family. When she asked her Mom and Aunt Dot about her family, they gave her very little information like something was being hidden. It seems as if family was a forbidden topic to talk about. After the passage of Allison talking to her Mom and Aunt Dot, Allison states, “Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is just this—if we cannot name our own we are cut off at the root, our hold on our lives as fragile as seed in a wind.” Again this statement reflects off of the title and shows the things she is just not sure about.

Connections Between: The Shawl & When the Emperor was Divine

            
         
               After reading the two books “The Shawl” and “When the Emperor was Divine” I was able to make some connections between the two novels. Both novels show the hardship and the emotional damage that characters face with being discriminated and put in places they don’t belong. In the novel “When the Emperor was Divine” the characters suffered for three years in internment camps that they were sent to during the war in the 1940’s. When they returned from the camps, they experienced long lasting changes in their personality, appearance, and in life. While in the book “The shawl” similar changes took place. For instance, much distress comes upon Rosa as well from being placed in a death march during the holocaust. Both novels show characters changes and struggles while being in terrorizing conditions.

 In the novel “The Shawl” Rosa deals with much torture, pain and suffering. When she survives the camps and try to return to living a normal life she can’t move on from what she has faced. Emotionally, Rosa is damaged from the experiences that she has faced just like the woman in “When the Emperor was divine”. The woman who was also a victim of a horrible event that was more like genocide caused much emotional and physical damage.  The woman became very depressed and she was not as strong as she was in the beginning of the book.

Even though both characters in both novels face a sense of change, they both change in completely different ways. For example, Rosa cannot let go of what happened to her. She states, “Only Nazis catch innocent people behind barbed wire.” When Rosa seen the barbed wire by the beach at the hotel she immediately thought of her painful past. In “When the Emperor was Divine” the woman returns from being in internment camps for four years, her life back home is not the same. Emotionally the woman seems a little damaged but willing to move on from what she has faced.

In both novels, the author makes the reader get a sense of the terrible events that each character faces and how they deal with the situation. After reading both books I feel like I can’t fully empathize with what people really went through in these tragic events, but I can sort of understand the situations they faced.

Symbols: Magda & The Shawl

In the book “The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick there seem to be certain people and objects that are major symbols that are mentioned throughout the novel.  In this book it seems as if there are two significant symbols which are Magda and the shawl. The book is titled The Shawl because one unique shawl seems to play an important role from the beginning to the end. Magda, who is Rosa’s baby girl who had died while residing in the camps, seem to be an important and big symbol in the book as well.

                Even though Magda dies in the first story of the book, Rosa still seems to write to her and make believe things about her. Rosa makes Magda out to be all these things that in reality Magda can never be because she is no longer living. For example, “To her daughter Magda she wrote in the most excellent literary polish.” Rosa was writing to Magda long after she was dead trying to keep Magda alive in her mind but in reality she is gone forever. When reading the paragraph where Rosa mentioned Magda I felt that Rosa uses Magda as a memory that symbolizes the past and what she had been through. Magda is the sad past that Rosa just can’t seem to let go of. Magda is used in the book as a false sense of hope and comfort. Even though it is putting Rosa in a comfort zone pretending Magda is alive, it is becoming an unhealthy way to cope with events that happened in her life. Another major symbol is the shawl itself.  Throughout the book Rosa holds on to the shawl because it also symbolizes the past. Rosa holds on to it when Magda was a live she holds on to it when she dies and she continues to keep it.

                There are so many symbols in the novel “The Shawl” that represents more than what they seem. Magda and the Shawl are two prime examples of symbols with a deeper meaning.

The Significants of the Shawl

In the book “The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick, is a book that are based on fictional characters that experience true events. This book takes place during the holocaust and goes into great detail about what had went on during this tragic period. The book is broken up into to two parts; the beginning chapter which I have read is called The Shawl same as the title of the book. This title is significant because the author wraps the story around a baby and an important shawl.

The Shawl is important because Rosa uses it to cover the baby Magda. Rosa knows that if Magda is found she will be killed. Rosa and Magda became completely dependent on this shawl. For example, as stated in the book, “the shawl was Magda’s own baby, her pet, her little sister. She tangled herself up in it and sucked on one of the corners when she wanted to be very still. Then Stella took the shawl away and made Magda die. Not only did the baby Magda depend on the shawl for something to give her love to but she depended on it to keep her secure. Rosa depended on the shawl as well; she expected the shawl to keep Magda secure and fed. For instance, “Magda relinquished Rosa’s teats first the left, then the right; both were cracked, not a sniff of milk. The duct-crevice extinct, a dead volcano, blind eye, chill hole, so Magda took the corner of the shawl and milked it instead. She sucked and sucked, flooding the threads with wetness. The shawl’s good flavor, milk of linen.” When Rosa was not able to feed Magda she looked to the shawl for nourishment. Rosa also depended on the shawl to hold her sorrow. For instance, at the end of the first part of the book, Rosa looks to the shawl to hold in her pain when Magda died. “So she took Magda’s shawl and filled her own mouth with it, stuffed it in and stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up the wolf’s screech and tasting the cinnamon and almond depth of Magda’s saliva; and Rosa drank Magda’s shawl until it dried.

The shawl was an object that played a big part in the first part of the book. It became a necessity to Rosa and Magda and for that one moment when Stella stole the shawl everything seemed too changed.

Otsuka's Purpose

In the book “When the Emperor was Divine” there are many true events that occurred during the 1940’s. Many Japanese families had to live in Internment camps; in the novel, there was one family that the author told the story around. While this family was in these internment camps, they had to face many changes and overcome many hardships. It seems to be a tough time for the family living in those conditions left a permanent and damaging image in their minds. While this family spent three years of their lives in this environment, it seems to have taken a emotional and physical toll on them. It’s stories like “When the Emperor was divine” that America tries to hide and avoid but Julie Otsuka made sure that the reader got to get a feel of what it was really like for the Japanese living during these times.

After reading the book “When the Emperor was divine” it was obvious that Julie Otsuka had a clear purpose for writing this book. She wanted to show people the affect that the internment camps really had on the Japanese. She goes into detail about the physical and emotional changes that the characters experience. For instance, while the woman was in the internment camps she experienced a lot of physical and emotional changes.  The woman becomes depressed and her physical appearance starts to change. Her and her soon notices that changes that are going on in her face.

She stood in front of the mirror tracing the lines along her forehead and neck with her finger. “Is it the light.” She asked, “or are there bags under my eyes? “There’s bags.” She pointed to a wrinkle by her mouth. “See This?” He nodded.

I thought this quote was important because it really showed how much of a physical change that the internment camps caused for the woman. Throughout the book, Julie Otsuka uses much detail to describe many of the families hardships during their time spent in these camps. With Otsuka’s descriptive detail, the reader can almost picture their selves in the families’ shoes but can never relate. It would be hard to even imagine what many Japanese families went through but Otsuka gives readers an idea of what society was trying to hide.