Words and Books are Closer than we Thought

The English language is always changing, whether it is words, or the definitions. A reason why the language always changes is because of the use of words are used by people of different generations. If the words are going to change, then the way an author writes will change, too. The way a story is written gives a reader the imagination to picture what the author was really thinking about when they wrote their piece of art. Some authors are naturally very explicit in their use of imagery, others just keep it plain and simple. If an author writes too detailed, then they might lose their readers because they might barely understand what the author is describing. If an author keeps it simple, they have a better chance of keeping their reader's attention. I am not saying that an author should dumb down their work, but there is always that chance of writing a too complicated book. So, why was it that Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own was so complicated to read, yet her writing is so famous? It was Gilman's story, about her insanity, that was the easiest to read, but many readers have never heard of her.

A Room of One's Own was not a bad book, or the story line was not that complex to follow, but the actual writing itself. When we started reading the books, Woolf's story was about her defining what a woman needs to write, to become a famous authoress. Gilman's story was about her obsession with a yellow wallpaper, which lead her futher down the rabbit hole of insanity. Virginia's story was more in depth and had more to talk about then Gilman's, but she lost me and many other readers so many times in the story. For example she would never clearly state when a person was talking, or she would jump from one storyline to another, all on the same page. Another book like this is the Great Gatsby, which jumped around a lot, too. These books were written near the same time, so maybe the type of writing of these authors had to do with the times.

The times that we live in determines who we are, and how we communicate with the world, and other people. Autors do that job when they write books in the most popular style of that time. While Woolf's style might be considered very complex for this age, it stills opens a window into the way people did talk and expressed themselves back then. Gilman does this too, but it wasn't so much the technique, so much as the way a woman's opinion was valued, when she knew something was wrong. Just like the times and writing, the rights of a woman has changed too.