ntaining two selves, the creative soul and the socially acceptable outer shell, drove many of these women to madness.
Walker contrasts the strain experienced by white women with that of African American women by referring to Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." Woolf contends that a woman cannot be a fiction writer unless she has a room of her own and financial independence. African American women in the early twentieth century certainly had neither. The majority, like Walker's mother, married early and had a houseful of children before they reached the age of 20. So much for a room of one's own. And financial independence was well out of reach for all but the most well-educated African American families, much less single black women on their own. Yet despite these obstacles, African American women managed to express their creativity.
Woolf talks about the "contrary instincts" that served as obstacles to women in the sixteenth century who wanted to express their gifts of creative genius. Walker contends that the contrary instincts that hindered black women were far more formidable than those that hindered white women. The white woman faced social ostracism. In some rare instances she was burned at the stake as a witch or confined to a mental asylum. In contrast, African American women in the sixteenth century endured slavery, guns, beatings, and a total disregard for their dreams and aspirations.
Walker claims that the most pernicious contrary instinct of all was that which resulted in splitting the self
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