Freedom's Sentence

Tradition can be a great thing. It offers connections from generation to generation, it is an efficient way to obtain knowledge about the past, present, and future, and it is natural and practically stress-free with no need for change. There are many things I have learned about in my life through tradition, such as religion and family history. As Virginia Woolf explains in A Room of One's Own, male writers throughout history have had tradition before them, a kind of "sentence" to write off of. Although this "sentence" proved helpful and appreciated by male writers, "it was a sentence that was unsuited for a woman's use" (76). Initially I thought, "gosh that would have been such a disadvantage for past female writers. No tradition to follow? How could they even begin to write without examples laid before them?" After I thought about it, it became clear to me why this lack of tradition for women writers could be such a benefit...FREEDOM! "Indeed, since freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art, such a lack of tradition, such a scarcity and inadequacy of tools, must have told enormously upon the writing of women" (77). And so it did. Female writers of the nineteenth century, like Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen, received praise for their original works. When you think about it, female writers could have gone most anywhere with ideas for their writing, and that, to me, is reason enough to become a writer. The ability to express whatever you desire on a page with no set guidelines or anticipated criticism for going against the tide (of course there will always be criticism though) is unbeatable. I am tempted to say that male writers throughout history were the ones with the disadvantage because of their lack of freedom to write whatever they wanted, unlike nineteenth century women writers who could explore all types of writing and ideas to the ends of the earth. To boot, women writers of that time period receiving praise and acceptance for their works in the face of traditional male writing was a miraculous achievement. If I were given the choice between the two, I would have liked to be a female writer over a male writer during that time because of the freedom of expression and the ability to write my own sentence.