Composition
The fictional character of Marie Rogers lives a life similar to Agnes Smedley’s. While the novel is fiction, the content is predominantly autobiographical. In the 1987 republication, Alice Walker states in her foreword “... it is the true story (give or take a few minor changes, deletions, or embellishments) of one woman’s life. Marie Rogers of Daughter of Earth is Agnes Smedley” (2). In his 1973 afterword, Paul Lauter discusses Smedley’s life, full of struggle and hardship, as it led up to the writing of Daughter of Earth as a therapeutic exercise. “Psychoanalysis...was for her not a fad but a last remedy” (411). The novel is divided into seven parts. Daughter of Earth has become a standard piece of proletarian literature because of its focus on the struggles of the working class.
Read more about this topic: Daughter Of Earth
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)
“Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.”
—Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)