Come Out of the Shadows

“Because women in our culture are not simple encouraged but required to be the bearers of emotion, which men are culturally conditioned to repress, an epistemology which excludes emotions from the process of attaining knowledge radically undercuts women’s epistemic authority.” From what I understand, in order for a woman to become successful, she must repress her emotions and write the way a man would. I think Jane Tompkins has a clear understanding of the rules of the game and has a successful writing carrier because of it. The only way this will change is if women like Jane Tompkins refuse to play by the rules and write from their mother tongue, incorporate her personal experience into her literary criticism and shatter the glass ceiling that has set the standard for far too long. Or, she can remain in the shadows; play by the rules, and save the emotion for her personal journals. I personally have a hard time writing in any other voice. I can't stop myself from writing in the mother tongue, because that is the only voice I know. I like to experience what I read on a personal level and that is also the way I write.