The Strain of Maintaining two Selves

For this reason, the poet Jean Toomer referred to these women as "saints." He perceived that they were over ordinary women but lacked the words to adequately describe their hidden selves. Walker, however, has no trouble naming them. She describes them as "Creators, who lived lives of spiritual waste, because they had been so rich in spirituality--which stands out as the basis of Art" (Walker 640). The strain of maintaining two selves, the creative soul and the socially acceptable outer shell, drove numerous of these women to madness.

Walker contrasts the strain experienced by white women with that of African American women by referring to Virginia Woolf's "A Room of one's Own." Woolf contends that a woman can not be a fiction writer unless she has a room of her individual and financial independence. African American women inside early twentieth century certainly had neither. The majority, like Walker's mother, married early and had a houseful of children prior to they reached the age of 20. So a lot for your room of the own. And financial independence was well out of reach for all but the most well-educated African American families, a smaller amount single black women on their own. Yet despite these obstacles, African American women managed to express their creativity.

Woolf talks on the "contrary instincts" that served as obstacles to women during the sixteenth century who wanted to express their gifts of creative genius.

The purpose of Walker's essay is to prevent modern African American women from suffering the same fate as Phillis Wheatley. In "A Room of the Own" Virginia Woolf talks for the lost novelist, the anonymous creative spirits who need to have existed in between women in past generations. Woolf finds these creative geniuses among women and the working class. Walker finds them in between slaves and wives and daughters of sharecroppers. She urges African American women to identify the creative genius in their personal mothers and grandmothers. Walker observed her very own mother's genius in her gift for gardening. By finding their ancestors' gifts, African American women can attune themselves for the strain of genius within them that has been handed down from generation to generation. The identification of creative genius helps African American women cope with the contrary instincts of society that hinder their progress.

Unfortunately, for ethnics along with other minorities the assumption in the self-elected identity usually requires eliminating traces of ethnic identity in favor of whiteness. Immigrants usually Anglicize their names and physical characteristics: "Alter the shape of the nose, tint of skin, or texture of hair" (Ellison 152). The City College student that Ellison encountered in the bookstore had done so. Ellison, raised in Oklahoma, known this student like a Native American passing for white. Ellison does not condemn this once he understands the value of wearing the mask in America.

at the contrary instincts that hindered black women have been a lot more formidable than individuals that hindered white women. The white woman faced social ostracism. In some rare instances she was burned at the stake being a witch or confined to a mental asylum. In contrast, African American women inside sixteenth century endured slavery, guns, beatings, and a total disregard for their dreams and aspirations. Both Ellison and Walker put their faith during the creative spirit.

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