Women's Literature

The purpose of studying literature is similar to studying anything: to learn about the world and learn how to function with everyday life. Literature can resonate and relate with people from all over the world for decades. Great literature leaves us more mindful and aware about other cultures and their customs and struggles and allows us to understand ourselves as human beings and individuals more. Women's literature focuses on the lives of women as they go through their everyday lives with family and home and personal relationships. Women's literature is often targeted with a certain plot that achieves a goal of raising issues and situations that often confront women in their everyday lives. It's necessary to study literature because it is prevalent in society today. During the Harlem Renaissance, a time of empowerment for blacks, black literature and black music was highly studied and very popular. Today, the fight for equal rights for blacks and whites is not as prevalent. Instead, 50% of the worlds population deals with similar issues everyday and finds comfort and power in literature. Women's literature is necessary to study because it allows more people to understand struggles that they may not go through and strengthens the bond of women with women and men with women. Munro's work that often targeted the struggles of women was very significant during the 50's to the 80's because it was an important time for the empowerment and high achievements of women. Similar to the Harlem Renaissance with black literature, second wave feminism brought rise and request to literature similar to Munro's. Women had basic rights at this point but there was hidden sexism and a hidden hierarchy between men and women at this time. Munro was one of the famous authors that challenged social norms and brought these issues to light. This resulted in two things: it empowered women to speak up against their injustices and it made the general public more aware of personal problems that no one could speak up against at the time. Although she does not identify as a feminist, just the fact that Munro's work brought to light the problems that women face contributed significantly to the feminist movement. The first step of solving a problem is recognizing that there is one, and Munro was able to heavily impact the feminist movement with her work. Her work was able to tackle vest specific feelings that women face that every woman around the world could relate with. She was able to explain and empathize certain struggles in detail through her literature and it brought rise to newly found womanly empowerment thoughout the fight for gender equality. Throughout reading the short stories, all of Munro's work was able to resonate with me on a personal level, something that I enjoyed the most. It is rare that literature can relate with so many people and can bring feelings and experiences to mind when someone is reading. Every word and every experience that Munro writes is able to reach out and connect with any audience of any culture and any time.