Thoughts of Joyce

I thought Joyce's work (specifically over Frazer) was really interesting since I happen to have recently made friends with someone really into feminism who happens to post a lot about it on Facebook, making me somewhat more aware of the issue than before. The piece about her moving out specifically reminded me of her. It just really hit me how far women's rights and social perception have come since I wasn't really aware of just how far back they used to be. How scandalous it was for the people around her to find out that she was moving out of her parents and single. But it all came down to her trying to avoid the mistake she felt her mother might have made and that the fact that she was a women wasn't going to stop her from being a fully realized person. She couldn't tell her parents that though, it was a decision completely individualistic, something that women weren't really expected to do at that time.

 I wasn't really sure why the letter to Kerouac was thrown in the book though (other than the fact that it was just kind of cool that it was a letter to Kerouac). Most of it seemed really passive and casual. I never felt like I was getting any sort of insight to anything of much importance to anyone that it wasn't directly written to.