Hd and Angelou



Chinese philosopher and political theorist Confucius once said, “Words are the voice of the heart”. Voice is a thing that one either hears or ignores, and throughout history women’s voices have been ignored by men, media, and society. So often a woman’s voice has been portrayed from a man’s point of view. And women have been told by men to be silenced, and not to express themselves through creative outlets such as writing, painting, or performance art. From Shakespearian time women’s roles in live theater were ever acted out by young prepubesiant boys, as one may recall from Virginia Woolf’s” A Room of One’s Own” a character named Judith Shakespeare who was just as talented as her brother William but was not given opportunity to express her creativity because she was a women (Deshazer 38). Hilda Doolittle and Maya Angelou were two women who just like Woolf had their voices roar in women’s literature. Through Hilda Doolittle’s Poem “Eurydice” she was able to tell a tale which was originally from the eyes of a man into the woman’s perspective, and Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” portrays what she is in society and how she has overcome what she is suppose to be: voice is their tool, a tool from the heart and voice is how these women their stories across.

To begin there are some similarities and differences between Hilda Doolittle and Maya Angelou which one should have knowledge of. Hilda Doolittle or H.D. has also been known as J. Beran and Edith Grey. She was born in 1886, She grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Europe and spent a large part of her life there writing, she died in 1961 (Morris, 123). Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis Missouri in 1928, and was given the name Maya Angelou after dance performance (Clark, 2009). Each writer places a focus on different topics as well; Doolittle makes a focus using Greek Mythology, and Angelou using a focus on being African American (Deshazer 1197, 1222). And as one can see each writer...