Final

Women's literature is literature written by and about women and generally is used to show the hardships that many women have to go through and deal with in their lives.  The purpose of this type of literature is to try and make people more aware of the suffering some women have to endure and to try and lessen the amount of women that have to suffer.  All of the books we have read this semester have shown different struggles that women of different cultures had to overcome or learn to cope with.  I think the stories are supposed to empower women and show them that just because they may have to overcome obstacles does not mean that they cannot do what they desire.  In the novel "In the Time of the Butterflies" the three rebel sisters lived in a small community where women were not necessarily as equal as men.  The sisters found a way to accomplish their goals by becoming well-educated and persisting in their efforts to create a better society.  This is a good example of the purpose of women's literature because it is supposed to give hope to women who think they cannot do the things they dream of doing, simply because they are women.  In most of the books we read there are certain experiences that the women go through that define the rest of their lives.  In the book where the Japanese family have to go to the concentration camps, that whole experience changed the lives of the children completely.  When the children first entered they seemed like innocent, naive children, and after they had been there for a while they matured very quickly and became different people.  The children had to adapt to their situation in order to survive the ordeal.  The big sister had take care of her little brother which left her little time to be a normal girl.  In "The Shawl," both Stella and Rosa's lives were changed greatly.  After the death of Rosa's baby, she was never able to forgive her niece for stealing the shawl away from Magda.  This one event shaped both of their futures in some way.  Stella was also never able to get over her experience in the Holocaust and this is shown when she meets a friendly elderly man who said he was also from Warsaw, but he left in 1920.  Her response was, "My Warsaw is not your Warsaw," which basically means that he had no idea of what she had been through.  In "Push," Precious had to deal with pregnancy at an extremely early age.  Pregnancy is one of the most common hardships that most women have to go through in their lives.  In Precious' case, she had to unwillingly deal with it at the age of twelve.  In addition to being pregnant at the age of twelve, the reason was due to her father raping her since she was seven years old.  Rape is a huge issue amongst many women, and I think this book was meant to show how extreme the issue is.  Tons of women are raped throughout the world and this book brings awareness to that fact.  When Precious had her first child she wanted to give up but one of the doctors kept saying, "Come on Precious, push."  These were some words of encouragement that helped her later on in life as well.  The two books by Eve Ensler were centered around normal everyday problems that women have to deal with, and allow women to take pride in themselves and their bodies.  A lot of women are self-conscious of their looks, their sexuality, and just knowing who their identity is.  These two books address these issues and are supposed to show the reader how they are not the only ones experiencing these feelings, and women should take pride in their differences.  All of the books we have read this year in some way are meant to bring hope to struggling women across the world.

The Shawl Question #2

I believe the reason why the author decided to include such a small segment about the Holocaust was due to the fact that the book was not supposed to be a recount of Holocaust experiences.  This book was mainly about Rosa and her relationship with Stella and other people and how her experience in the Holocaust made her act the way she does.  When Stella steals the shawl for herself Rosa's baby is exposed and thrown against an electric fence by one of the guards.  After this event Rosa is forever scarred and blames her baby's death completely on Stella, even though she was only fourteen years old.  She resents Stella so much that she calls her "The angel of death," which is also the nickname for the notorious Nazi doctor who performed disturbing and inhumane experiments on Jews in the Holocaust.  This one event completely shaped their relationship for the rest of their lives.  The story is mainly about Rosa's life in Florida because it captures her life after the Holocaust and how it affected the outcome her future.  Stella sends her money and is very nice and patient with Rosa, but Rosa still holds an everlasting grudge against her because of the unintentional death of her baby.  Rosa is also slightly deranged thus unable to have normal relationships with people.  She feels alone in the world because she believes that no one could ever understand what she had gone through.  When she met an old man in the laundromat the man realized that they were both from Warsaw, Poland except he moved to the United States in 1920, well before the Holocaust began.  She responded by saying, "My Warsaw is not your Warsaw."  What she meant by this is that even though they are from the same place, the way they remember it is drastically different due to her experience in the Holocaust.  Her life in Florida is a way to show people the lives of the Holocaust survivors after the Holocaust, and how it will forever affect them in the way that they live.