LIT150 City Colleges of Chicago Literature by Women Common Messages Paper
In this week’s poems and reading selection, you are exposed to a variety of topics and ideas. However, there are some common themes and messages from all of the early women writers. This assignment has two parts (1) name and describe three common messages and themes you believe are prevalent in all of the week’s readings, and (2) present and describe what angered, surprised, and pleased you about the work we read for this week.
Queen Elizabeth, “The Doubt of Future Foes”
Anne Bradstreet, “The Author of Her Book”
Sojourner Truth “Aint I a Woman?”
Barrett Browning, “How do I love thee?”
Margery Kempe, from The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapters 3 and 4
In at least two short paragraphs, be sure to answer the questions in complete, correct, detailed, and well-supported sentences.
Read and respond (in 5-7 sentences) to these two discussion.
- A common theme in the “Sojourner Truth” poem is sexism, racism, and self advocacy. She believes she worth a lot more and has much more pride then to belittled by other man and women. Men in this poem do not treat her the same as others and make her feel that is not equal or deserves to be treated equally in the aspect of morality. She knows she is a capable women who can achieve any task that any other men can do, and has been through many hardships throughout her life that has shown to over come them no matter the circumstances. Due to the fact of her appearance as well she is treated very differently and has witnessed many negative events in her life time such as slavery.
- What Angered me from the readings that we have read so far is becoming aware of what women in the past had to endure, and go through due to slavery and sexism as well. How women were never treated equally in many forms compared men. This always made women feel like they were lower then many men and had to right to speak on their own beliefs or act upon any decisions or thoughts they had. Thankfully we had many strong women who had great beliefs of changing how society viewed both genders, through history more and more actions were taken to change this cycle. Now we live in an era where both men and women are viewed equally and we continue to fight for that right to continue seeing things this way, and we still have a large amount of people who do not believe it should be this way. We as a whole society should be able to support each other and acknowledge that we can be better together.
- The women that we have read from this week are fierce, strong and independent. You can’t mess with them for sure. When reading this week’s selections, I felt empowered. By far, Sojourner Truth’s poem was my favorite. To me, she said what was on her mind, that’s how I am. She had to defeat a lot of obstacles while living her life. I did too. I feel that in many ways, we are alike. She made me feel like I can do anything that I want. That I can accomplish all the things I need to in order to have a better life. I also feel that there is a lot of pain coming from these women as well.. One common message that I get from this week’s readings is the fact that women fought to have rights. It took us a long time to get them, so we should be able to use them. Women are individuals just like men. Most women are more dominant than men. One theme that I got from the readings is slavery. The women we read from were slaves in their own way. One was a slave to her husband, one was a slave to her people that she ruled and one was an actual slave that we all read about. Love was also a message that I got from the readings. The love was not always the good, happy, butterflies in your stomach love either. Sojourner Truth had thirteen children when she was a slave. I’m sure she loved each and everyone of them. Queen Elizabeth loved the people she ruled so she started the Angelican Church. She also didn’t let family stand in her way of the throne. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is showing us love by counting the ways she can. She even says that she’ll love even more when she’s dead. I think people use the poem a lot in wedding ceremonies.
