What does place mean? Should it mean the singlular term by which we, as individuals, define ourselves? Or is it merely a starting point from which we all propell ourselves into life? As these past few weeks have gone by, it’s occurred to me that people generally allow themselves to be defined by that which surrounds them, whether it be South Bend, or Saint Marys, or even just friends and peers.

Why is that?

Why, in our search for self acculization and awareness do we let setting or place

limit what we can become?

I guess that this is what eacho of the authors we have read have been trying to decide as well. For Sanders, it was a tangible place, for Dillard it was a desk or chair, and for Woolf it’s her place or identity as a woman. Instead of defining us, these things (our homes, our pasts, our gender) should only serve as backdrops to who we become.

Place, time, space… all of this is temporary, it comes and then it goes, but who we are, who we choose to become, lasts for a lifetime. And hopefully, our lives will positively affect other generations. Woolf talks about how, as a woman, she feels the walls of “man”kind closing about her, limiting her genius as well as the genius of those who came before her. For this reason, we (as women) cannot let place limit us, restrict us to what society is comfortable accepting.