Women And Journeys Mary Morris Analysis
The non-fiction text “Women and Journeys” is from 1992, and is written by Mary Morris. The author lives in New York and has the experience of many journeys, which she uses as an inspiration in both her fiction and nonfiction publications.
In this essay, she’s telling about women’s roles in their own lives, and how they for years have been waiting at home for their man instead of travelling. In this text I will comment and analyze it, and furthermore focus on gender differences.
Marry Morris begins the text by quoting something clever that John Gardner once said: “ There are only two plots in all of literature: you go on a journey or the stranger comes to town.”
For so many years women had been denied to travel. They were, therefore, left with only one plot to their lives: to wait for someone. Someone who could continue writing their plot and making their own story intriguing.
Because of the plot women were situated in, the literature for them was also usually about “…waiting, and usually waiting for love.” . The literary works Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf wrote, was something most women could relate to, in that women’s independence was of current interest. Since women were denied their part of their freedom by the society to travel physically, they had to travel inside by their emotions.
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To support this, she uses the famous Penelope from the Greek Mythology as a timeless symbol. Penelope was the faithful wife of Odysseus, who kept her suitors at bay in his long absence with marital faithfulness. She didn’t know when or if her husband came back when he took on his twenty years long sail trip, but all she did was waiting for his return. Marry Morris calls Penelope for “the archetypal waiter”, because from her time and to the present women have been waiting for their
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