 What is your favorite color? Mine happens to be purple because I recently read color purple by Alice Walker. Hi friends, welcome to my channel, I am Arpita Karwa and in this video lecture I am going to talk about American feminist movement and few important writers associated to that movement. We all know these major writers but hardly anybody knows how this movement actually began. This movement was started by a letter which was written by a lady called Abigail Adam to her husband. In that letter she said to her husband that remember all men would be tyrants if they could be. If women are not paid due care and attention they will definitely come up with a rebellion. This was a letter in which she not only addressed her husband but then she also addressed the members of Congress and she urged them to give women the freedom that they deserved. This letter became so popular that throughout America all the women started the same kind of rebellion and they also fought for their own rights. They also started breaking the boundaries, the social boundaries in which they were captured by the male members of the society and this is how the movement spread and gradually we find so many writers started writing on the pains and condition of a domesticated female. So this is how the movement started and later it took a very sharp turn and somewhere down the line we find that women were even given voting rights, they were given separate rights, they were given the right, they can file a divorce petition and so many other things were a part of this movement. When you look at the feminist works, when you look at feminist literature you will see that almost all the works are written by women and they talk about gender roles and they question the gender norms. So that is the major theme which is a part of all the feminist works. Now we'll first be looking at the works of Kate Chopin who is one of the most famous American feminist writer. Kate Chopin has written a number of works like story of an hour awakening. Almost all her works you will find story of a woman who is trying to break the traditional bonds of matrimony. So all those independent women rising above the norms and rules of society that is the kind of figure you will see in all her works and how she was able to write such strong and independent figures, how she was able to cast such strong and independent figures in her novels. This is a question. This is because her father died in a railroad accident and after the death of her father she was raised by her mother, her grandmother and great grandmother. So these three independent and strong women raised her and somewhere we find that she was quite inspired by these strong women and thus she began writing stories which were on the same theme. For example in a work called story of an hour we have a protagonist who hears about unexpected death of her husband in a railroad accident and she feels so sad she mourns the death of her husband but at the same time she's surprised to see a kind of unexpected freedom that she's feeling from within and then she realizes that somewhere she's able to see a life beyond her husband and that is what the entire theme of this story all about who is independent, who is strong, who doesn't need a man and that was the main point which somewhere inspired other writers to write as well. The next writer that we are going to talk about is Charlotte Perking Gilman. Charlotte Perking Gilman is not only a writer but then she's also a social activist and she wrote a lot of works in which she encouraged women to take up a stand for themselves. She also worked in several NGOs where she asked females, she motivated them to live an independent life and this was going on a very smooth plane when one day after giving birth to a child she suffered from postpartum depression. Now if you're wondering what is postpartum depression I'll tell you that one out of eight women suffer from postpartum depression. It is a kind of depression which a female goes through a depressive phase which she goes through after giving birth to a child and same happened with Charlotte and when she gave birth to a child she suffered from this condition. At that time there was no proper medication so the only popular treatment which was available was rest therapy in which the female was asked to rest in her room and nobody used to come and see her and she was not allowed to think about her career and other stuff so she just needs to rest and it was said that after few days she'll recover on her own and while she was resting in the room she saw a yellow wallpaper which was there on the front wall. When she used to look at the wallpaper for a longer duration of time she felt as if there's a woman inside the wallpaper who is trying to talk to her and she had this feeling of connection and she somewhere felt as if that woman represents her own suppressed emotions. The same experience that she faced during the postpartum disorder she has there written it down beautifully in her most celebrated work which is called yellow wallpaper. In yellow wallpaper she has described the story of a woman who is in her rest therapy period and she is able to find a connection with a woman who is hidden inside the yellow wallpaper which forms the background of one of the walls of her room so that is the storyline and when you read that book you'll see how beautifully she has narrated each and every incident of her life how she has narrated each and every suppressed emotion with somewhere due to the influence of society or due to her own upbringing she was not able to tell properly in front of the world so all these experience are beautifully written in the work yellow wallpaper. The next writer that I'm going to talk about is Alice Walker. Alice Walker has written a lot of novels in a lot of works on the topic of racism on the topic of sexism on the topic of abuses that a female receives on the hands of male dominated community so that's the major theme of her works she has written this wonderful work called color purple in which she talks about life of a girl called Celie who receives abuse from not only her husband but also from her father so she has received a lot of trauma a lot of violence on the part of her husband as well as father and she is writing a set of letters addressed to her sister as well as to God and in those letters she describes all the incidences of her life and it's a epistolary novel which means a novel which is compiled out of the letters written by the protagonist so it's a epistolary novel and the letters are addressed to her sister as well as God and one very specific thing about this novel is that her husband he's never named in the novel every time she wants to mention her husband's name he would say she would call her as Mr. Dash so Mr. Dash denotes the husband of Celie so you can see that you know there's a lot of symbolic meaning that you can derive out of this one statement that I just said that she was so unhappy with her relationship with the husband that she doesn't even want to name him he doesn't want that she should even remember his name because even the name draws out so many negative emotions in her mind so many negative experiences in her mind that she feels overwhelmed so this is the kind of storyline that is followed in color purple so that's it about this audio lecture I've tried to give you a glimpse of American feminist movement and some really prominent American writers we study all these writers in detail and there are a lot of other works that I cover in my online course you can go to my website arpitaakarwa.com and in my website there's a section called online course content in which I've mentioned 700 plus writers which I cover in my online course if you like that list you can join my online course apart from that you can also subscribe to this YouTube channel because I post videos every Saturday and every Sunday for UTC net aspirants and I help them in their net preparation through this small initiative that I'm taking apart from it I'm also running a free go net quiz on all the social media platform so you can go to my social media pages and check the go net quiz that I've posted till now and participate in the go net quiz contest that's it for this video lecture we'll meet in the next video lecture till the time we meet next happy learning keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpitaakarwa.com