In Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens,” she states that:
“Virginia Woolf, in her book A Room of One’s Own, wrote that in order for a woman to write fiction she must have two things, certainly: a room of her own( with key and lock) and enough money to support herself.” (Page 235)
Immediately after this passage, Walker goes on to critique this thought as false using the example provided in the life of Phillis Wheatley. Although I initially agreed with Woolf in that the prerequisites for writing fiction were as she described, after reading through In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, I found myself disagreeing with Woolf. While a room along with funds are certainly important for a person’s state of being, the only real necessity for creating works of fiction is the drive to do so. If Phillis Wheatley, a slave who didn’t even own herself was able to create great poems through great effort to herself then why can’t any other striving female writer?
Walker further goes on to talk about how while many great stories were first thought up by one generation, they simply did not have the resources necessary to publish their thoughts and had to instead pass down their stories to their children in the hopes that their children would be able to publish the stories. Two of the most famous and well known pieces of fiction, The Iliad and The Odyssey, were passed down through the generations through word of speech until they were finally published once the tools were available to do so. Unfortunately for many of the black mothers described by Walker, their names will never be accredited to the stories their children wrote. Walker herself gives credit to her mother for several of the stories she has published but personally, there is no need to. Much like the title, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, the role of the first generation of female slaves is to provide the seeds from which the second generation will grow from along with the decayed compost from which the second generation will gather nutrients from until the cycle repeats with the final generation producing fantastic results, which in this case will be great works of literature.
Where did you read that *The Iliad* and *The Odyssey* were verbal stories passed down from generations?
When Alice Walker said in *In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens* that “through the years of listening to [her] mother’s stories of her life, [she had] absorbed not only the stories themselves, but [the urgency to record them,]” I was profoundly enlightened to a lifestyle unknown to me, in which mothers flippantly tell stories after stories and their kids potentially take a pen to paper and record them for keepsake. Therefore I think it’s necessary to mention the fact that there were women (and men, too, probably,) who were artists in their own right, and their credit lies in the stories published by the people inspired by them.
Nonetheless I agree with your last point, that the purpose of the former generation is to establish a good foundation for the next generation. I’ll add that I find it unbelievably depressing to think that someone will live his or her life planting seeds of dreams, living with no hope of ever seeing it grow…
Alice Walker gave us great example that a woman was capable to write some good poems without money and room of herself. However, I still agree with Woolf’s opinion. I am not saying women can’t be a successful writer without money or a room of women themselves, but I think with these two things, women will have more advantages to be come successful writers.
One interesting point that you brought up in your blog post, i feel like a lot the older generations did not have the resources necessary or the opportunities to publish their thoughts then they are forced to pass down their stories to their children/ the younger generation to publish them. ” a room of ones own” and “money” might not be the only need/important thing for a women to create and become a good writer, but i think they will definitely be a great an asset for them.