versations on a wide rangeof topics were a way for them to feel they exercised some measure of control over their lives and the eventsthat shaped them . . . They were in control if only forthe two hours or so that they remained in the house(Marshall, 1996: 1949).It was in the kitchen where these women felt they has the power to be themselves. The kitchen was their own little world where they had the ability to have an opinion on anything from a women they knew to the United States president. Through the spoken word, these women had no inhibitions. They had found their freedom and independence in the one safe place that they knew best: the kitchen.In Hurston's story, Delia also found her independence and freedom inside her own home. Home was a place where Delia expressed herself through both her creative spirit and through the spoken word. Although Delia was a working woman who did white people's laundry, her creative spirit was brought out in the very way she faithfully and methodically completed all of her work each week. She knew that hard work paid off because she bought her house from the money earned through her sweat. She does not depend on anybody, not even her husband, and she is able to gain some sort of pride from her work or the results that her work has provided for her: "Too late for everything except her little home. She had built it for old days and planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely to her, lovely" (Hurston, 1996: 1492). In a moment of truth and solitude, Delia finds solace in her home. She discards the burdens in her life and she takes refuge in the positive. If there is anything of value to Delia, it is her hard-earned home. She has acquired a sense of independence in knowing that she has a place that is nobody else's but her own: "Hurston endows her fiction with a consciousness of space and place and their impact on personal growth" (Dixon, 1987: 85).Walker and Marshall celebr...
