Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own
Missing works cited
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf ponders the plight of women
throughout history. Woolf 'reads the lives of women and concludes that if a woman
were to have written she would have had to overcome enormous circumstances' (Woolf
xi). Woolf's initial thesis is that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if
she is to write fiction' (Woolf 4). Throughout the book, however, she develops other
important conditions for artistic creation. Woolf mentions many nineteenth century
female writers in order to explain these conditions, but she does not mention Mary
Shelley. Woolf most likely excludes the author of Frankenstein because her writing
contains considerable male influence. The circumstances of Shelley's life, however,
meet Virginia Woolf's basic requirements for the production of good fiction. Mary
Shelley possesses a well-rounded education, encouragement, and an 'androgynous and
incandescent' mind (Woolf 98).
In A Room of One?s Own, Virginia Woolf suggests women produce so little
literature because of the tremendous discouragement and criticism that female writers
face. She discusses the effects of opposition and disapproval upon the artistic mind. The
opinions of others greatly affect artists, and it is those of genius who are most sensitive to
criticism. Woolf proposes that it was literally impossible for a talented woman to write
well during the sixteenth century: ?A highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift
would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled
asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a
certainty? (Woolf 49). To further illustrate her poin...
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...tial thesis is that ?a woman must have
money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction? (Woolf 4). Throughout the book,
however, she develops other important conditions for artistic creation such as a wellrounded
education, encouragement, and an ?incandescent and androgynous? mind
(Woolf 98). Although Virginia Woolf does not mention Mary Shelley in A Room of
One?s Own, probably because of the strong male influence in Shelley?s writing, the
circumstances of her life meet Woolf?s basic criteria for the production of good fiction.
Mary Shelley?s excellent literary education, stimulating life experiences, encouragement
from family, and lack of anger, bitterness, and fear in her writing grant her the status of
one of the most famous female writers of the nineteenth century.
Works Cited:
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, 1989.
Woolf utilizes a rhetorical question in order to develop her call to action, which is that women should overcome their fears and express themselves. In the last paragraph, she states, “But this freedom is only a beginning; the room is your own, but it is still bare. It was to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be shared. How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it, and upon what terms?” The author is building upon the metaphor of life being like a room; it should not be bare, for a bare room...
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.
Why, out of all things needed in order to write, were these two things relevant? Woolf had a problem with the way men and women were treated when it came to money. Statements such as, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,” support the claims she made about simply dining.
Written almost 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” brings forward a new definition of virtue. Machiavelli’s definition argued against the concept brought forward by the Catholic Church. Machiavelli did not impose any thoughts of his own, rather he wrote from his experience and whatever philosophy that lead to actions which essentially produced effective outcomes in the political scene of Italy and in other countries. While Machiavelli is still criticized for his notions, the truth is that, consciously or subconsciously we are all thinking for our own benefit and going at length to achieve it. On matters of power where there is much to gain and a lot more to lose, the concept of Machiavelli’s virtue of “doing what needs to be done” applies rigorously to our modern politics and thus “The Prince” still serves as a suitable political treatise in the 21st century.
Wilson, John Dover. An Introduction to the Sonnets of Shakespeare: For the Use of Historians
In chapter two of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf introduces the reader to the uncomfortable conditions existing between men and women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Woolf’s character, Mary Beton, surveys books about women at the British Museum and discovers that nearly all of them are written by men. What’s more, the books that she does find express negative sentiments about women, leading Beton to believe that men are expressing “anger that had gone underground and mixed itself with all kinds of other emotions” (32). She links this repressed anger to man’s need to feel superior over women, and, wondering how and why men have cause to be angry with the female sex, she has every right to be angry with men.
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.
Does the narrator show weakness through this mental illness or is it a sophistical mind of a genius? This is the question that must be answered here. Throughout this discussion we will prove that the narrator is a man of a conscience mind and committed the crime of murder. Along with that we will expose Poe’s true significance of writing this short story, and how people were getting away with crime by justifying that they were insane.
In A Room of One's Own the narrator begins an exploration of women in literature. She attempts to answer many questions regarding women. The first being why is literature about women written by men. She also critiques the scholarship of the great men of literature.
What does Woolf fail to address in her feminist stance, and how do her oversights affect not only her credibility, but how certain women view themselves?
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 ...
Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 130." The Longman Anthology of British Literature: compact edition. Ed. David Damrosch. Addison-Wesley, 2000. 556.
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, 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.
Throughout her life Virginia Woolf became increasingly interested in the topic of women and fiction, which is highly reflected in her writing. To understand her piece, A Room of One’s Own Room, her reader must understand her. Born in early 1882, Woolf was brought into an extremely literature driven, middle-class family in London. Her father was an editor to a major newspaper company and eventually began his own newspaper business in his later life. While her mother was a typical Victorian house-wife. As a child, Woolf was surrounded by literature. One of her favorite pastimes was listening to her mother read to her. As Woolf grew older, she was educated by her mother, and eventually a tutor. Due to her father’s position, there was always famous writers over the house interacting with the young Virginia and the Woolf’s large house library.