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An Analysis Of Professions For Women By Virginia Woolf

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“Professions for Women” spoken by Virginia Woolf delivers a message to women that it is not hard to get a job and earn pay without disrupting the “family purse” and the “family peace”. Women getting a job would add to the “family purse” along with the men’s money and disrupting the “family peace” would happen if the woman wasn’t in the house to cook, clean, or raise the children. Woolf tells her audience that being a woman with a job, hardships will come,
+but getting through them is what makes her job a profession. Contrast is a big part of this speech in regards to women in professions. The title for example, is a contrast. “Professions for Women” In the 1930s, women getting jobs became more popular, but the woman was still expected …show more content…

Woolf uses an allusion to a nineteenth-century Victorian poem, “Angel in the House” to reference her obstacles as “phantoms” and the “Angel” as society telling her that she's doing wrong by not following the woman stereotype of the 1930s. Her diction turns the tone dark, but Woolf turns it around to a happier tone by putting a little humor into her allusion. “The shadow of her wings fell on my page… ‘My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man… use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own’.” The Angel or society tells Woolf that she shouldn't think freely, and that she should be flirtatious and seductive. This is one of the phantoms or obstacles that Woolf encounters in her profession of writing. The tone that the author sets for the Angel and her phantoms is depressing. “I turned upon her and I caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her… Thus whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo on my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her.” Woolf is figuratively killing her phantom which is the Angel or society, telling her what she should be doing. Woolf has to get rid of this Angel because she stands in the way of Woolf’s quality of life, and stands in the way of her identity and profession. Woolf now turned the tone into a hopeful sense of success in following the want of a person’s life, and not letting

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