Virginia Woolf, a founder of Modernism, is one of the most important woman writers. Her essays and novels provide an insight into her life experiences and those of women of the 20th century. Her most famous works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando: A Biography (1928), The Waves (1931), and A Room of One's Own (1929) (Roseman 11).
A Room of One's Own is an based on Woolf's lectures at a women's college at Cambridge University in 1928. Woolf bases her thoughts on "the question of women and fiction". In the essay, Woolf asks herself the question if a woman could create art that compares to the quality of Shakespeare. Therefore, she examines women's historical experience and the struggle of the woman artist. A Room of One's Own explores the history of women in literature through an investigation of the social and material conditions required for writing. Leisure time, privacy, and financial independence, are important to understanding the situation of women in the literary tradition because women, historically, have been deprived of those basics (Roseman 14).
The setting of A Room of One's Own is that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. Her thesis is that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction (Woolf 4)." She creates the character of an imaginary narrator, "call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please, it is not a matter of any importance." The "I" who narrates the story is not Woolf, yet her experiences and thoughts provide the background for Woolf's thesis.
The narrator begins her search going over the different educational experiences available to men and women and the more material ...
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...s, 1882-1942. v.: ill.; 28 cm. Semiannual. Issue no. 33, 32, 1989. Vol. 1, no. 1, 1973; no.2, 1974. California State College, Sonoma, Dept. of English.
Roseman, Ellen. A Room of One's Own: Women Writers and the Politics of Creativity. Twayne Publishing, Inc., New York, 1995.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. Print.
Internet Sources Consulted
Brooks, Rebecca B. “Timeline of Virginia Woolf’s Life.” The Virginia Woolf Blog. N.p., 19 Feb. 2012. Web. 14 Apr. 2015.
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Burt, John. “Irreconcilable Habits of Thought in A Room of One’s Own and to The Lighthouse.” ELH 49.4 (1982): 889-907. JSTOR. Web. 14 Apr. 2015.
Rodriguez, Lara Ma Lojo. “"A New Tradition”: Virginia Woolf and the Personal Essay.“Atlantis 23.1 (2001): 75-90. JSTOR. Web. 14 Apr. 2015.
Virginia Woolf, in her novels, set out to portray the self and the limits associated with it. She wanted the reader to understand time and how the characters could be caught within it. She felt that time could be transcended, even if it was momentarily, by one becoming involved with their work, art, a place, or someone else. She felt that her works provided a change from the typical egotistical work of males during her time, she makes it clear that women do not posses this trait. Woolf did not believe that women could influence as men through ego, yet she did feel [and portray] that certain men do hold the characteristics of women, such as respect for others and the ability to understand many experiences. Virginia Woolf made many of her time realize that traditional literature was no longer good enough and valid. She caused many women to become interested in writing, and can be seen as greatly influential in literary history
Throughout Virginia Woolf’s writings, she describes two different dinners: one at a men’s college, and another at a women’s college. Using multiple devices, Woolf expresses her opinion of the inequality between men and women within these two passages. She also uses a narrative style to express her opinions even more throughout the passages.
On April 26, 1986 the worlds worst nuclear disaster happened just outside the town of Pripyat. Located not too far from the capital city Kiev, Ukraine. According to History.com, More than 70,000 people have suffered from the effects of this disaster. Along with much of the land (18 square miles) around that area will not be habitable for the next 150 years, forcing as many as 150,000 citizens to re-locate permanently. At the time of the explosion, Chernobyl was the largest and the oldest nuclear power plant in the world. With four 1,000 megawatt reactors, one reactor explosion and meltdown could affect hundreds, if not thousands of people. Still, the soviet government tried to cover it up or hide this from its own people, as well as the rest of the world. The Soviet Union initially reported the death of two individuals and requested advice for fight graphite fires. Even as Sweden was starting to pick up dangerous levels of radioactivity, the Soviet Union continued to not take responsibility and warn surrounding nations. It wasn't until years later that the full story is released to the public.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1929. Print.
... he’d start screaming at me, in this very high pitched, yellow-belly voice. […] But I’d plug him anyway” (136). Holden pictures Maurice will be “screaming” in a “very high-pitched” voice, demonstrating how now Holden is a man because he posses a phallic symbol and Maurice has nothing to counter with. However, Holden realizes the fantasy is farfetched and finishes his dream of killing Maurice by thinking much more logically and says, “The goddam movies. They can ruin you.” (136). Here we see Holden coming to terms with how he understands the failure of the movies as mentors, but he is so desperate that he is willing to let them “ruin” him. In addition, the self proclaimed “most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” says, “I’m not kidding” which helps the reader understand how serious Holden is being about the potential for boys to find improper guidance in them.
Virginia Woolf, in her treatise A Room of One's Own, identified a gendered division of labor. For her, men work in the market place and make the money while the women, the upper class women at least, attend to the social pleasantries and household management. While she lamented this state of affairs, she did not present, as Gilman did, a model for existence that would allow men and women to operate on the same level. However, a direct comparison to Gilman is somewhat unfair as she was not focused on the status of women in the economy so much as the status of women as writers. Like Gilman, Woolf saw this division between a man's work and a woman's work as a socially constructed conceit. Unlike Gilman, Woolf advocated a further break between the world of men and women.
In A Room of One’s Own, Virignia Woolf presents her views evenly and without a readily apparent suggestion of emotion. She treads softly over topics that were considered controversial in order to be taken seriously as an author, woman, and intellectual. Woolf ensures this by the use of humor, rationalization, and finally, through the art of diversion and deflection. By doing this Woolf is able to not alienate her audience but instead create a diplomatic atmosphere, as opposed to one of hostility that would assuredly separate the opinions of much of her audience. As Woolf herself says, “If you stop to curse you are lost” (Woolf 93). Because of this, anger is not given full sovereignty but instead is selected to navigate the sentiments of her audience where she wills with composed authority and fascinating rhetoric. That being said, Woolf is not without fault. She occasionally slips up and her true feelings spill through. Woolf employs a stream-of-consciousness narrative, satire, and irony to express her anger towards male-controlled culture in what is deemed a more socially acceptable way than by out rightly saying that they suck.
School uniforms are a way for principals to know who belongs on campus and who does not. A while back, researchers studied that the reason certain school require students to wear school uniforms is because they feel that it will help stop other students from bulling one another, just because they don’t have on high priced shoes or clothing it shouldn 't stop them from doing what they do best. "The good thing is people judge you on your inner characteristics rather than what you wear," said Nick Duran, an 8th grader and the student-body president at Rogers Middle School (Portner)." Safety is they key, when students enter the school ground, they should feel safe and not think that someone is going to harm them. Students feel as if they have to wear school uniforms it will
By being deprived of rooms of their own, there is little possibility for women to rectify the situation. Even though this is clearly a historical truth, Woolf’s assertion was revolutionary at its time. It recast the accomplishments of women in a new and far more favorable light, and it also forced people to realize the harsh truths about their society.
Virginia Woolf was born January 25, 1882 to an English household in London. Her father was Sir Leslie Steven, a historian and author who was a major figure during the golden age of mountaineering; her mother Julia Prinsep Steven, an India native, nurse and also an author of the profession. With two substantial successors as her parents, Woolf was one of seven siblings granted with majestic opportunities. These opportunities included being educated by her parents. During this time girls were not allowed to go to school and many did not have the privilege of parents whom were able to instil education. Knowing this, Virginia was bound to excel in life. In fact, Woolf utilized her privileged life to her potential. She spent time in numerous locations which she eventually incorporated into a lot of her work and modernist novels such as, Profession for Women. In the essay, Profession for Women Woolf discusses, “the Victorian phantom known as the Angel in the House that selfless, sacrificial woman in the nineteenth century whose sole purpose in life was to soothe, to flatter, and to comfort the male half of the world’s population.” The essay shows how women struggled daily with the views Victorian society placed upon them. The ways of the Victorian era transcended over into the modernist times because some women were too afraid to explore their true selves. However, Virginia did not accept these ways because she knew as a woman she could not be complete if she lived up to the Victorian standards. Woolf determined that unless one has explored and experimented the new things attainable from the world then they also cannot be complete. In this essay, I will be responding to Virginia Woolf’s essay Professions of Women and the struggle of ...
Work Cited Woolf, Virginia. A. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2005.
School uniforms have become more common nowadays than before. They used to be worn in private schools only it was very rare to go to a public school and see students wearing the same designated outfit. But not everyone is fond of wearing uniforms to school, many people see it as teachers and school administration taking away the rights of self-expression from students. But that shouldn’t really matter because kids and teenagers go to school to gain knowledge and be prepared for the real world not to show off their new pair of shoes to other kids.
The light that Virginia Woolf shed not only on women in literature in 1929, but on women’s equality as a whole, has finally paid off. Throughout the decades succeeding her book, women have been climbing their way up the social ladder inch by inch. The historical meaning of A Room of One’s Own started off as this almost plea for a woman’s voice to be heard. Though women have the same rights as men, are they suddenly seen as the same, or are there times where the word “equality” just becomes a social appearance? This theme of wanting to be heard, and women’s equality still resonates with the gender today. Women can look back and realize how far they have come. Women are now heard through mediums such magazines, books, poems, novels, lectures, and essays to name a few. Women are able to understand this text that Woolf gave them and use it as a tool to remember that power in literature comes great responsibility. The responsibility here is to maintain, progress, and preserve the important role women play in society by means of educating men. Women should also not think of themselves, in this generation, as superior to men just because they are now regarded in the same manner. “All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of
School Uniforms are a logical choice for the public school venue. Uniforms prevent students from a lower income background to be singled out for poorly made or cheap clothing, prevents use of gang colors, allows for certain safety measures, and allows teachers to form impressions of students based on actions and work rather than dress code choices.
As stated, in the article “The Pros and Cons of Uniforms in School” by Holly Charlonne, “some schools will look to uniforms as a possible way to bring together students from various backgrounds as a unit” (Charlonne). When the students are dressed alike, it takes away the social segregation that sometimes a child may feel if they do not have the same style of clothing as another child. Charlonne, also suggests, another proof of this advantage can be seen in the “cutting down the number of cliques that are formed in school due to economic or social status seems to have had a positive outcome in past from having students wear designated uniforms in public schools” (Charlonne). Wearing the uniform reduces the competition for who has the best clothes and who doesn’t, and allows the student to focus their attention on more productive matters. When the students all wear the exact same thing, they feel as though they belong to the group. The unity created by all students in uniform gives them an elevated sense of pride toward their school. Recent surveys have shown that “despite the fact that they (students) aren’t exactly thrilled about wearing uniforms, some students do recognize the benefits they offer”, in fact “54% of the students” included in this survey, report “having to wear a uniform didn’t compromise their identity” (Lake). It is for this reason that I firmly agree with the notion of public school