Virginia Woolf's Two Ways To Belong In America

Set of characteristics in which a person/ thing is definitively recognizable is what defines oneself true identity. Luckily we are able to see how this takes place within three stories. “What If Shakespeare Had a Sister” by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) this story demonstrates the different opportunities women and men had at the time. Proving that women had no value and had no identity at the time, women were made to feel like their thoughts and ideas were not valued what so ever and had no choices or life on their own. In the story “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee’s talks about two sisters Mira in which she came to Detroit in 1960 to become a preschool teacher and married an Indian student. Then there is Baharati who’s married

This story has a powerful meaning that help define identity. The author proclaims that every woman needs a room of her own. In which gives a symbol of privacy and independence. Having this story define men and women and their inequalities it’s easy to spot true identities with the following quote “Call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or any other name you please—it is not a matter of importance” (wolf). This line comes from the first chapter of the story and it gives the meaning lack of one identity, in which it can be assume that the main character remains vague about her true identity. In that time women had no choices of their own therefore Virginia Woolf tries with this story to encourage to go out and accomplish things for the woman and to find true self

In “Two ways to Belong in America” there are the two sisters that have to interact with the country that they’ve chosen to live. The author contrasts her American lifestyle to her sister’s Indian traditional life. When a new legislation that stimulated citizenship to legal immigrant living in the US was passed, both sisters had different reactions. Starting with Mira saying “I feel manipulated and discarded. This is such an unfair way to treat a person who was invited to stay and work here because of her talent.” (Mukherjee) and on the other hand there is a different reaction from the other sister Bharati by saying “I need to feel like a part of the community that I’ve have adopted. I need to put roots down, to vote and make the difference that I can. The price that the immigrant willingly pays, and that the exile avoids, is the trauma of self-transformation.”(Bharati). With this example being said identity comes in to place because everyone has one community that there are a part of and that’s what makeup ones identity. Each one of the characters in this story Mira and Bharati still are different in their ways of interacting with the country they have chosen to live in, Mira lives like an expatriate Indian but Bharati lives as a part of the community and it’s how the condition of