Alice Walker’s The Creativity of Black Women in the South cuts to the very core of what Black women had been stereotyped all along. She questions how the creativity of the Black woman was kept alive and how for many years the Black people had been prevented to read and write. She writes, for these grandmothers and mothers of ours were not “Saints,” but Artists; driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there was no release. They were Creators, who lived lives of spiritual waste, because they were so rich in spirituality-which is the basis of Art-that the strain of enduring their unused and unwanted talent drove them insane. Throwing away this spirituality was their pathetic attempt to lighten the soul to a weight their work-worn, sexually abused bodies could bear. (Walker, para 10).
Everything connected with the arts and writing was forbidden. Romances were manifested through literary pieces. The intellectuals were the prime movers of how love should be expressed in refined cultured ways. Traditional codes later were replaced with fights because of pride, and fierce forces were injected to pursue love over a battle. The breakdown of traditional codes came to place were romantic poems, anti-war romances were replaced by articles of anti-romance. She provides a clear example in the person of Phillis Wheatley, a slave in the 1700s.
Yet some women think that they must avoid superfluity and be contented with moderate living. Perhaps this way, they could preserve themselves from the epidemic. Others opted to form small communities of people who were not stricken by such epidemic; they left their homes and lived separately from those who were stricken by the said disease. While others shut themselves up in their houses where no sick people were, others thought of living temperately, avoiding all excess richness in their lives. Issues about death and sickness were avoided in their discussions. What was discussed were pleasurable thoughts or things that drove them from thinking about the dreaded disease. Despite efforts to dissuade themselves from thinking about the epidemic, the more real the disease loomed. People justified that perhaps all these were manifestations of men and women’s own doing where human and divine laws seemed to disappear. Most men and women did nothing but cared about themselves although there were also those who shared what they had with others thinking that they all seemed to be in the same fate no matter what status or condition they belonged to as the plague inflicted anyone indiscriminately.
Indeed, for many generations, it has been believed that a woman’s place is within the walls of her own home. For a long time, many believe that it was impossible to imagine the time when her duty there shall end or to forecast any social change which shall release her from that paramount obligation. Even throughout most of U.S. history, popular belief held that “women’s place was in the home,” and that their talents should be applied solely within the domestic setting.
Traditional love was manifested in how men and women expressed their love for each other. While men would resort to wonderful feats of courage and selfless nobility to win the hearts of the women they love, the women in return subjected themselves in selfless submission to their husbands despite the possibility of ending up loving their husbands more than their husbands would love them back. Women emerged as strong crusaders of their faith. They fought in armor, joined the troops and confronted violent and sad fates. Practically women were unarmed yet they took their cross as crusaders. Women, for the love of their faith in God, were enthusiastic about venturing to crusades where men refused to go. While they had reputation of causing trouble and were capable of being violent, they stood firm of their convictions to defend their faith from those elements that threaten to destroy or crumble down Christianity.
Work Cited
Walker, Alice. In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South (1974). Ms. Magazine. 2008. Web.