Overcoming Obstacles in Life is Essential to Helping Overall Success Have you ever wondered if there could possibly be overwhelming obstacles in the way of someone being truly successful in life? Some may witness friends or loved ones not developing to their fullest potential in their profession because of these unobtainable obstacles holding them back. In “Professions for Women,” by Virginia Woolf, Woolf gives a speech to a group of women explaining why they must overcome certain things in order to be successful in their future professional careers. In speaking to this group of determined young women, Woolf explains how horrendous it may be to have your own thoughts or beliefs while living in a society said to be dominated by males. She …show more content…
Woolf gives various examples in her life of how this discrimination has an enormous effect on the capability of women to have their own thoughts, opinions, and to see with their own perspective. Woolf’s argument that women must overcome certain obstacles, “angels,” or phantoms, is effective through her use of the rhetorical triangle, her elaborate diction, and the rhetorical situation. Woolf uses the rhetorical triangle in an effective way to argue for her reasoning that women must overcome obstacles in order to be successful. Throughout her essay she uses various appeals to ethos and pathos in order to make her argument as effective as possible. During her speech she refers to “Angels in the House” being the phantoms or angels, as she prefers to call them, hindering her effectiveness in her writing of literature. Woolf discusses how when she would write a review on the male sex, this pure, sympathetic, sweet angel of a woman was a significant voice inside her head. Woolf states to her audience that the angel …show more content…
Her word choice throughout her speech is showing how passionate she is about this cause and helping prove that women must overcome these so called phantoms to achieve their goals and dreams. In her speech Woolf uses the phrase “only to be herself,” a number of times. This phrase can truly speak to the reader and have them take a step back and realize that in that day and time, for a woman to truly be herself, she may have to make sacrifices in the world of her profession. Individuality is something that no one should ever take lightly. Using this phrase truly strengthens her argument and could potentially motivate women to want to be ambitious enough to have the courage to overcome the stereotype of women having to hold back, and to just express them self. As well as this phrase, Woolf uses an excellent choice of diction in the excessive use of words “angel,” and “phantom.” One particular phrase that stands out is, “had I not killed the angel she would have killed me” (Woolf 378). This powerful and compelling metaphor truly shows that if women do not overcome their fear of being themselves in front of men, they will be overwhelmed by this fear and possibly not have the chance to
In the predominantly male worlds of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh (Book I)”, the women’s voices are muted. Female characters are confined to the domestic spheres of their homes, and they are excluded from the elite literary world. They are expected to function as foils to the male figures in their lives. These women are “trained” to remain silent and passive not only by the males around them, but also by their parents, their relatives, and their peers. Willingly or grudgingly, the women in Woolf and Browning’s works are regulated to the domestic circle, discouraged from the literary world, and are expected to act as foils to their male counterparts.
The contrast between how She sees herself and how the rest of the world sees Her can create extreme emotional strain; add on the fact that She hails from the early 1900s and it becomes evident that, though her mental construct is not necessarily prepared to understand the full breach against Her, She is still capable of some iota of realization. The discrimination encountered by a female during this time period is great and unceasing.
Woolf, an author, discusses many of the injustices that she had personally faced due to the fact that she was a woman. In one example, Woolf was walking on the grass in order to get to a place more quickly, as the sidewalk would have taken longer. She was then told to return to the path because only men and scholars were allowed to be on the grass, or turf as she referred to it as. She was then forced to take the sidewalk just because of her gender. Later, she was then forced to exit a university library because you had to be a male attending the college, been in accompaniment with a male who is attending the college, or had a “letter of introduction”.
Throughout history, women have struggled with, and fought against oppression. They have been held back and weighed down by the sexist ideas of a male dominated society which has controlled cultural, economic and political ideas and structure. During the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s women became more vocal and rebuked sexism and the role that had been defined for them. Fighting with the powerful written word, women sought a voice, equality amongst men and an identity outside of their family. In many literary writings, especially by women, during the mid-1800’s to early 1900’s, we see symbols of oppression and the search for gender equality in society. Writing based on their own experiences, had it not been for the works of Susan Glaspell, Kate Chopin, and similar feminist authors of their time, we may not have seen a reform movement to improve gender roles in a culture in which women had been overshadowed by men.
... convey the ways and outcomes of patriarchal oppression. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” the result was insanity, in the novel The Awakening death was the result and in “The Story of an Hour” the result was also death. These are not the only results of a sudden realization that men should not have all the power. Women have resisted patriarchal power and earned their power against oppression throughout the years that followed the 19th century.
Virginia Woolf, prolific novelist, essayist and critic, delivered “Professions for Women” as a speech before the National Society for Women’s Service on January 21, 1931. Her address highlighted the obstacles facing professional women while emphasizing the pressure placed on women by Victorian standards and expectations. Woolf’s purpose was to empower the solely female audience and to illuminate the simplicity in creating a career, despite the obstacles through outlining her personal experience.
Society continually places specific and often restrictive standards on the female gender. While modern women have overcome many unfair prejudices, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were forced to deal with a less than understanding culture. Different people had various ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities, including expressing themselves through literature. By writing a fictional story, authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James were given the opportunity to let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic.
In the analysis of the issue in question, I have considered Mary Wollstonecraft’s Text, Vindication of the Rights of Woman. As an equivocal for liberties for humanity, Wollstonecraft was a feminist who championed for women rights of her time. Having witnessed devastating results or men’s improvidence, Wollstonecraft embraced an independent life, educated herself, and ultimately earned a living as a writer, teacher, and governess. In her book, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” she created a scandal perhaps to her unconventional lifestyle. The book is a manifesto of women rights arguing passionately for educating women. Sensualist and tyrants appear right in their endeavor to hold women in darkness to serve as slaves and their plaything. Anyone with a keen interest in women rights movement will surely welcome her inexpensive edition, a landmark documen...
the disabilities of women are social and economic; the woman writer can only survive despite great difficulties, and despite the prejudice and the economic selfishness of men; and the key to emancipation is to be found in the door of a room which a woman may call her own and which she can inhabit with the same freedom and independence as her brothers. (144)
In life, people will always have something to say about you in everything one does in life, either negative or positive, but it’s the moment when you let what is said upon you affect the way you live your life, that when its becomes a problem. I for myself have been victim of so many people saying things about me and letting get into my head, but I had the courage to overcome a lot of obstacles like that. I have struggled with a lot of obstacles in my life some got the better of me while I have been able to overcome most of them. I am writing this essay to give an example of an obstacle which I struggled with for a very long time and I nearly took the best of me, but with time I was able to overcome it.
Born in 1882 Virginia Woolf is a noted novelist and essayist, prominent for her nonlinear prose style and feminist writings. Her essay “Professions for Women” designed as a speech to be given at the Women’s Service League in 1931, informs her audience of the powerful internal dispute she and other women face in an attempt to live their everyday lives as women living in a masculine controlled society, especially within the careers they desire. Woolf adopted an urgent and motherly tone in order to reach her female audience in 1931 during her speech and in response her audience gathered. As a result of her distinct and emotional writing in Professions for Women, Woolf created an effective piece, still relevant today.
Throughout history, women writers used pen names and pseudonyms to avoid the eyes of the patriarchal society. The female writers were no strangers to harsh criticism from the gender-biased readers regarding their artistic works. However such emphasis on gender discrimination coined the words, feminism and sexism, which now reflect on the past and the present conflicts. In the book A Room Of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf tracks down the history of women and fiction to find the answer. She argues, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. She chants on and on about the topic of “women and fiction”, contemplating the role of women in the traditional domain and the virtues of women writers. Although, Woolf may have contemplated over such awareness that a woman needs an atmosphere of her own in which nobody can intrude, the modern world has prevailed over such hindrances throughout technological innovations that offer freedom of speech. Also, economical affluence is not a necessity for women to engage in the fictional world but rather a sufficient condition in the modern world. Thus Virginia Woolf’s predictions failed to represent the current vantage point revolving around women and fiction.
Overcoming Obstacles Throughout a persons life, they are faced with different obstacles, and different challenges of all different types. My life in particular has been full of ups and downs, especially towards my soccer career. In the novel The Pact, three boys, George, Rameck, and Sam, are faced with many obstacles throughout their lives, where they must learn to overcome and achieve great success on their own will power. Essentially, I did the same thing. My soccer career has been one of my most difficult life challenges, creating the person I am today.
As previously mentioned, inferiority perceptions and obstacles for women remain prevalent in the twenty-first century. Although substantial progress has been made with regards to the educational opportunities for women, as well as educating both men and women to view women with equal regard, we have yet to achieve parity among genders. In particular, “Contemporary feminists, such as Catherine MacKinnon, argue that the law and society’s political institutions are based on male assumptions, such that women can never achieve equality within them” (Tannenbaum, 2012, p. 220). Additionally, the recent focus on gender socialization directly relates to Wollstonecraft’s writings. In fact, she may be one of the first philosophers to establish the foundation for studying gender socialization through her assertions from two hundred years ago, “the character of women was artificial, and a consequence of the roles society defines for them” (p. 213a). Tannenbaum’s summary of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, reads as though it’s from a current Sociology course in gender equality and diversity. “Women are fond of dress and gossip; are helpless, emotional, weak; and act like children, not because it is there nature, but because they are educated or trained this way” (p. 213b). Wollstonecraft’s assertions were revolutionary when taking into account the historical context of her vision. Hence, both genders can benefit from studying her feminist perspective, then contemplating how her vision has evolved over time in society, as well as advocating for its continued
Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing. Virginia Woolf 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.