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.