Class Race And Society Essay

Class, Race, and Society: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Ghosts I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen are both pieces of literature renowned for their author’s statements on society. Like many other authors and playwrights, Angelou and Ibsen used their art to express their views on relevant social and cultural issues of their time. The ideas these writers present paint the picture of two very different times in history in what would be seen as a controversial manner of the time period, respectively. While I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Ghosts may seem only comparable at face value, the two can easily compare and contrast in regards to class, race, and society and how they affect the world the

While Maya and her female family members defied a traditional role of their gender, they still dealt with struggles their male counterparts did not have to experience, or only experienced rarely. One of the biggest examples of this was when Maya was raped as a child. While men definitely can get raped too, it was even more significant for Maya as a woman in this time. Her trauma was not spoken about. She never had anything explained to her because not only was rape taboo, a woman’s body was at the time as well. No one every explained to her how her body would grow and change, so in fear of her body changing she rushed into her first consensual sexual experience and ended up a teenage mother. Her options for work were limited and the expectations society had for her life were significantly more limited than her male counter parts. Like with Civil Rights, Maya Angelou was able to use her own experiences to add to the chant of women all across the United States of America fighting for women’s freedom and liberation. With this novel Maya Angelou showed just how capable, respectable, and intelligent a woman could be, even if a man was too blind to see it right in front of