Analysis Of Woolf From A Room Of One's Own

Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own 1. If Shakespeare had a sister, she would not have been sent to a grammar school in which she was allowed to learn logic, classic literature, and Latin, like he was. a. If she was equally talented and loved the theater like him, she would have been met with many challenges. 1. It is possible for her to have had just as strong as a gift for word. 2. Yet her talent would have gone unrealized because of the way in which men and women lived during the time. b. Women during the time were considered part of the workforce and kept uneducated. c. Women who expressed any desire to read were considered witches, possessed by devils or suppressed in some way. 1. Many great novelist

“The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness” (904). 2. There must be freedom for women to write and for men to write about women in an accurate way. de Beauvior, from The Second Sex 1. The myth of women exists in literature and even has a place in reality. a. Different myths regarding women to exist that reflect the human condition. b. These myths cause a class division between the genders. 1. As a result of these divisions, women become “the other” to men. 2. Women therefore struggle between being what they are told to be and what they are. 2. Female archetypes exist, despite the fact that women may strive to be unique. a. Women could be “bad”, convey erotic behavior. b. Women could also appear to submissive, take care of the home, and rely upon men to be their guardian angels. c. So often, women’s personalities are made out to be symbols and social archetypes that are often polar opposites or antonyms of another type of woman. 1. The saintly mother is juxtaposed with the cruel stepmother. 2. The angelic girl is paired with the perverse

What does it mean to be a woman writer and a literary author in a patriarchal dominated society? a. Looking at the story of Snow White, Snow White is considered sweet and dumb while the Queen is fierce and mad. b. These two character types are prevalent in literary history and have prevented women from talking back. 2. Writers look to their predecessors for inspiration and literary guidance. a. An “anxiety of influences” does arise and seem to influence writers’ work. b. Harold Bloom has a theory in which a “strong poet” must engage with his literary “precursor”. 3. “Bloom’s model of literary history is intensely (even exclusively) male, and necessarily patriarchal” (1928). a. The male poet uses the female as his muse. b. Literary history is overwhelmingly male, which leads to the “anxiety of influence”. c. How does a woman fit into the male dominated literary history? 1. Female poets do not experience the “anxiety of influence”. 2. She must reduce stereotypes in her writing. 3. Instead of “anxiety of influence,” she experiences “anxiety of