Becky Lanham

Per. 3

Kate Chopin and Alice Walker are two well know authors from the 20th

century. These two women lived in two different times and they still had the

same view of men and women in society. Both of their works have received:

recognitions, awards, and prizes for their ability to portray certain “fragile”

topics.

Alice Walker was born in Eaton Georgia as the eighth child of

sharecroppers. Despite the economic difficulties of her family, she was

incredibly dedicated to her studies and graduated with degrees from both

Sara Lawrence and Spellman College. Walker volunteered in the voter

registration drives of the 1960’s in Georgia, and went to work in the welfare

Department of New York City after college. In 1967 Alice Walker married Mel

Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. Even though they weren’t the first

legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi, they did receive harassment

and murderous threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Later the couple had a

daughter named Rebecca in 1969, but divorced eight years later in 1977.

Walker’s first book of poems came out in 1968 and her first novel in

1970. Her early poems, novels, and short stories dealt with themes such as:

rape, violence, isolation, troubled relationships, multi generational

perspectives, sexism, and racism. When The Color Purple came out in 1982,

she became known to even more people than before. Her Pulitzer Prize and
the movie by Steven Spielberg brought both fame and controversy. She was

harshly criticized for the negative portrayals of men in The Color Purple. In

1989 and 1992, in the two books, The Temple of my Familiar, and Possessing

the Secret of Joy, Walker took on the issue of female circumcision in Africa

which brought up a lot of controversy. Her works are known for their

portrayals of an African American woman’s life. She vividly shows the

sexism, racism, and poverty that often make life a struggle. But she also

portrays as a part of that life, the strengths of family, community, self worth

and spirituality.

Kate Chopin was born Kate O’Flaherty in ST. Louis, Missouri. After her

father’s death, she developed a close relationship with her mother and great

grandmother. She also became an avid reader of fairy tales, poetry, and

religious allegories, as well as contemporary novels. In 1805, she returned to

Sacred Heart Academy. She graduated from the academy in 1868, but did

not achieve any particular distinction except as a major storyteller. In 1870,

at the age of nineteen, she married Oscar Chopin and settled in New

Orleans. Chopin had all her children by the age of 28. Shortly afterwards,

they moved to Oscar’s home in Louisiana because of his poor business

decisions. They moved again in 1879 to Coulterville to manage several small

plantations and a general store. Even though things weren’t going well for

Kate at this time, these hard times were the ones that influenced her future

writing. When Oscar Chopin died in 1882 of swamp fever, he left Kate with

twelve thousand dollars in debt. Her mother saw that she desperately
needed the help and told her and her children to come and live with her.

They finally settled into life in ST. Louis, where finances were no longer a

concern for her. The following year, Chopin’s mother died. As a result of this,

she became very depressed and began to write. She was very successful,

but some of her writings like The Awakening, were too ahead of their times

and therefore not socially embraced. Due to the lack of acceptance,

disappeared from the literary world for twelve years. She also ended up

dying from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1904.

The color purple by Alice Walker is significantly different from The

Awakening by Kate Chopin for a few reasons. One reason for their

dissimilarities is that The Color Purple was written almost a century after The

Awakening was published. A second thing that is different about the two

books is that in The Color Purple, African American women did not have the

luxury of a decent education. In The Awakening, being a proper lady meant

you had to have a proper education. Another reason for their differences is

that Alice Walker is a black female writer, whereas Kate Chopin was white.

Their heritage and eras that they lived in played a very big role on their

personality’s as well as the events that occurred in their stories.

In the two books, there is one thing that both Celie and Edna share.

They both don’t like their living situation and do whatever they can to

change it. “Life wasn’t easy for Celie, but she knew how to survive, needing

little to get by. Then her husband’s lover, a flamboyant blues singer, barreled
into her world and gave celie the courage to ask for more- to laugh, to play,

and finally- to love.” This quote from The Color Purple is telling us that it took

her husband’s lover to show her who she really was. It also took her

husband’s lover to show her that she did not have to be like the rest of the

African American women in her time. Finally after a long time had passed,

Celie realized that her husband was her obstacle and that she didn’t need

him.” It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended protecting

wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood.

They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and

esteemed it as a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow

wings as ministering angels.” This quote from The Awakening is showing us

that she does not want to be like all the other women. She wants to be more

in life, but her family and her society are her obstacles.

As a young girl Alice walker was very outgoing and self confident, until

she had an accident at the age of eight. As the story goes she was playing a

game with her brothers, and she was shot in her right eye with a bb pellet.

As a result of this accident, her personality changed dramatically. Many of

her classmates made fun of her, and she no longer was outgoing and

cheerful as she use to be. Although her difficulties were painful, it was

through persecution that enabled Alice to grow as a person.

When Kate Chopin was born, she was the third of five children. She

was also the only child to live past the age of twenty-five. During Chopin’s
life, many people very close to her passed away. These inconveniences

unfortunately caused her to enter states of depression. As a result of her

depression, she wrote many short stories in which many women could relate

to.

Regardless of the fact that Alice Walker and Kate Chopin were of a

different race, the main thing they had in common was their upbringing.

They were both underprivileged individuals who suffered a lot. Alice Walker

lost vision in one eye, and almost everyone around Kate Chopin died. But no

matter what they went through, they stuck through it and put good use to

their experiences by writing novels, short stories, and poems.

A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin, and Why War is Never a Good

Idea by Alice walker are two very different books. The main and most

obvious reason is the fact that A Pair of Silk Stockings is a short story, and

Why War is Never a Good Idea is a poem. A Pair of Silk Stockings is about a

woman who gets fifteen dollars and has her mind set on buying each of her

children something new for them to wear. While she is at the market place

however, she gets carried away and spends the money on treating herself

like she use to. To me, the theme of this story is don’t forget about yourself.

In The midst of everything, m

Miss. Somers ignored the things that she liked to do before, in order to fulfill

her children’s needs. The author’s purpose of writing this story is to show us

not to ignore our inner selves. Why War is Never a Good Idea is about how
war can destroy everything that we as a species, have worked so hard to

achieve. This story shows us that war doesn’t care if it hurts families,

animals, ancient artifacts, or our world in general. The theme of this book is;

don’t start wars so that we can keep our world for as long as we can. The

author’s purpose of writing this poem is to make people aware of what is

really going on in the world. So far it has worked, well for some of us at least.

These were the two authors and two of their works each that I chose to

write about. They both experienced different things, but their differences are

what make them similar.