A People Suppressed The suppression of women has occurred since the beginning of the century. There have always been women who have expressed their feelings on the matter in many different forms. Two such women are Virginia Woolf and Louise Erdrich. They use their cultures and time periods to show the ways in which women are suppressed, as well as, a silver lining for women to become empowered. These authors express their views through their literature, especially in their most well-known works, Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf) and Love Medicine (Erdrich). The women in their novels are suppressed in multiple ways. The characters are emotionally, physically, and sexually, and within their marriages. In Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, the main character Clarissa Dalloway is a suppressed middle class wife, who enjoys throwing parties for guests. Clarissa is suppressed internally or emotionally by her time period and culture. She lives her life according what is and isn’t appropriate. Virginia Woolf wrote her novel with an emphasis on description, however in her writing she doesn’t go into much detail on certain incidents. Such incidents are those of intimate nature. Woolf writes these scenes with barely any description compared to the rest of the book. One such scene is that of Clarissa kissing another woman named Sally, when she was a young girl. The absence of depiction of detail on the matter shows the sexual suppression of women. “In her novels, sexual passion becomes masculine property, comprehended by women in moments of empathy rather than experience, as in Mrs. Dalloway when Clarissa kisses Sally Seawall and experiences with brief intensity what men feel” (Showalter). Suppressing that women aren’t supposed to feel or enjoy their sexuality the way that men do. There is also a scene with her and an old friend named Peter Walsh, where they share a brief kiss whilst both of them are married “Clarissa was as cold as an icicle. There she would sit on the sofa by his side, let him take her hand, give him one kiss…”(Woolf). The way that the scene is depicted as brief as it is doesn’t go into depth on how Clarissa really felt in the moment. Clarissa also suppresses most of her feelings about her inner life. She suppresses her excitement of things that once happened, her deepest desires, and questionable thoughts about her past and how things could have been. “She, more than the others, has extinguished as much as possible all the excitement of her inner life: her male double, Septimus Smith, lives out the intense possibilities which Woolf saw as dangerous”(Showalter). She lives primarily within herself, in her thoughts, but never sharing them. She wishes she was closer with her daughter, however doesn’t know how to express this to her. She also tells no one including Peter of her thoughts or regret and what could have been if she married him. She keeps these thoughts to herself because she is a woman and that is just what they did. While the men of the novel Septimus included were able to act upon their internal thoughts, and impulses. Clarissa is also suppressed in her marriage. Her husband and she aren’t in a loving relationship they are in more of a formal friendship or arrangement, rather than a marriage. “For the House sat so long that Richard insisted, after her illness, that she must sleep undisturbed”(Woolf). They barely talk to one another and don’t really spend much time together. Clarissa when at home at the same time as her husband sleeps, or stays alone in her room in the attic. This space is as far away from her husband as possible in the house. Marie Lazarre Kashpaw is suppressed in her marriage as well. Her husband didn’t really even want to marry her. He chose her over another woman because he felt sorry for her and felt he needed to take care of her. Marie ends up stuck in this marriage to man who doesn’t love her, and leaves her alone constantly to take care of their children all alone. In Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich shows the suppression of women also by culture and time period. The women in her novel are suppressed by keeping private home and personal secrets entirely to themselves. No one is to know anything about their personal lives. Speaking friendly to one another is as far as it goes; no one seeks solace with anyone outside of themselves. This suppresses their femininity, by not allowing them to talk to other women about womanly things. One such character is Marie Kashpaw, the mother to many of her own children, as well as, orphans. She is married to a husband who is constantly gambling, drunk, and never at home. The people of her town continually make comments about seeing her husband drunk and inquiring issues within the family, but Marie says not a word about her husband and redirects the comment back at them. “I just laugh, don’t let them get a wedge in. Then I turn the table on them, because they don’t know how many goods I have collected in town” (Erdrich). She clearly doesn’t want anyone to know how things really are for her. That she is in a failing marriage and tries her hardest to keep her husband out of the bottle. “I had decided I was going to make him into something big on this reservation. I didn’t know what, not yet; I only knew when he got there they would not whisper “dirty Lazzare” when I walked down from church” (Erdrich). The women in this novel are shown being suppressed in such a way that is feministic. Marie Lazarre Kaspaw, LuLu Lamartine, and Zelda Kashpaw are all pictured or seen at home. “I was churning and thinking that day. With each stroke of my dasher I progressed in thinking what to make of Nector”(Erdrich). There are no men around. The women take care of the family with no help from men besides financially. “Nector was rarely home then. He worked late or sneaked out to gamble”(Erdrich). These ladies being depicted in always in the home is an ultimate example of the suppression of women. It is the one place women are always shown. King Kashpaw, the son of a character named June Kashpaw is a prime example of someone who physically and emotionally suppresses a woman. King is seen to constantly verbally abuse his wife, by telling her to shut up, or to mind her place and not step out of line. “What you saying there, woman. Hey! King shouted, filling the kitchen with the jagged tear of his voice. When you talk to my relatives have a little respect”(Erdrich). He doesn’t let her talk, or behave like her true self. He also physically abuses or suppresses her in many different ways. He not only hits her, but always does things to her that could very well kill her. “He was pushing her face in the sink of cold dishwater. Holding her by the nape and the ears”(Erdrich). This is probably one of the darkest forms of suppression shown in both the novels. Woolf and Erdrich both greatly show the suppression of women, however in each of their novels there is a glimpse of empowerment for all the suffering throughout the novels. In Mrs.Dalloway, Clarissa’s daughter has a tutor or friend named Miss Killman. She is a woman who doesn’t much like the way Clarissa lives. Miss Killman finds this kind of behavior suppressive because she is fine with living her life that way and not making anything of herself. She tries to convince Clarissa’s daughter that to not live the same life, to branch out and do something with her life that would be more meaningful.
The glimpse of empowerment in Love Medicine, is that in the end of the novel the characters, Marie Lazarre Kashpaw and LuLu Lamartine come together. “Only Grandma Kashpaw wasn’t one trifle out of current at the insight LuLu showed. She and LuLu was thick as thieves now. That too was odd. If you’ll just picture them together knowing everybody’s life…”(Erdrich). They both started off in different places, and were basically enemies because of one man, and then come together because of that man. This shows evolution of suppression to empowerment from other women.
Virginia Woolf and Louise Erdrich are two women literary authors, who wrote exquisitely the way women were suppressed in two different cultures and time periods. The women characters in these stories are suppressed in a variety of ways. Some are physically and emotionally suppressed. Others are suppressed within their marriages, sexually, or in a feministic manner. Through all this suppressive writing the authors slid some glimmer of hope for women’s empowerment. These characters experiences perfectly depict the way women are and have been suppressed. The authors wrote in hope that the women would read their novels and become more active in not allowing them to be suppressed in any means.

Works Cited
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. New York: Harper Perennial, 1984. Print.
Showalter, Elaine. “Women’s Literature from 1960 to the Present: Overviews”. Feminism in Literature: Gale Critical Companion. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol.4. 20th Century. Topics. Detroit. Gale, 2005. P.460-483
Tharp, Julie. “Louise Erdrich: General Commentary”. Feminism in Literature: Gale Critical Companion. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol.5: 20th Century. Authors (A-G). Detroit: Gale, 2005. P.436-449.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1925. Print.