Bell Hooks Communion Sparknotes

1. In her novel Communion, Bell Hooks sets up a main idea, which ultimately reveals the reasoning in which she wrote the book. In Communion she speaks about the truth behind loving oneself. When men are growing up they are taught to be able to keep their emotions to themselves, while women are taught the opposite. They are taught to be able to act on their emotions, which gives them a disadvantage. She goes on to speak about how men do not show their feelings and emotions to the public as much as women do. Women not only holding down the house with loads of duties during the day, they also are able to have a congruent job to men in the workforce. With this being said, women do not receive the correct emotional support needed, while men get pampered.
She writes about how we use love as more of a noun when we should be really using it as a verb. For example: love used as a noun would be a woman saying, “I need a love” rather than a verb, “I love myself” or “I love you”. This shows how a woman can be in need of a man rather than being in love with yourself or loving without being dependent of a man. Hooks also brings up the fact that for there to be a solid relationship between a man and woman there needs to be an equal work load. With an equal amount of work in a relationship there can be a healthy stable amount of love. Hooks ultimately wrote this to tell women that they do not need to be dependant of a man, and need to learn to love