Analysis Of Virginia Woolf 's ' Woolf ' Essay

In the excerpt from A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf argues that women writers face unfair educational, financial and social disadvantages. Throughout the excerpt, she hopes to persuade readers that in a patriarchal society, a woman must have privacy and financial independence in order to fulfill her literary potential. To accomplish this goal, Woolf effectively appeals to logos, pathos and ethos; however, her emphasis on establishing credibility most successfully persuades her readers.

As C. Sykes examines Victorian literature in his essay, he recognizes that many authors reveal gender issues. While some define characters by his or “her marital status,” others reveal inequality through “female capabilities” (Sykes). Victorian literature, like Bronte’s Jane Eyre, reveal gender

The first chapter entitled: The Profile of Women in the British Society during the Nineteenth Century, is connected with the social history of women at that time, in addition to their status, position, rights, and the social classes they came from. It provides a description of the kind of education that the Victorian girls have received. Moreover, it gives a vision of married women and their rights, and the issues of sex, divorce, and spinsters as well.

Social hierarchy and the patriarchal society are explored in Jane Austen’s novels. She shows us how society and class order affected women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Men were deemed superior over women. There were many differences that reflect the members of a particular social class and gender modes of conduct, upbringing, manner, education, and morality. Austen shows the injustice of inheritance laws and the psychological vulnerability of the women in her novels. Northanger Abbey portrays the volatility of patriarchal power.

If we look back on the 19th century, we see masterpieces like Jane Eyre that dared to shatter the standard of the quintessential Victorian woman, obedient and tucked away at home. In an article by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Charlotte Brontë, the author of Jane Eyre, was described as dissatisfied by a culture that

The Modernist skepticism is vivid in Woolf's portrayal of a woman, Isabella, who has not conformed to society's accepted norms and would seem to be - at first glance - all the better for it.  But, upon closer inspection it is with a sigh of resignation that Virginia recognizes the illusion that her fanciful exploration created for her.  Isabella (possibly representative of Virginia herself or of womanhood in general) is elevated and

Two-hundred years is a sizeable gap of time that allows plenty of room for change. American society had been rapidly changing from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, but despite this, the roles and rights of women have remained locked in place. There were many factors to consider as to why women were not allowed to flourish in their time and exceed these boundaries, and while some accepted it, there were many that opposed and faced these difficulties head on. Two female authors, one from colonial times, and one from nineteenth century America, have written about the obstacles and misogyny they’ve overcome in a male dominated literary career. Despite the two-hundred-year gap between the lives of Margaret Fuller and Anne Bradstreet, they both face issues regarding the static stereotype that women are literarily inferior and subservient handmaids to men.

The nineteenth century is popularly known for its traditional view of gender roles, especially regarding women. The term “True Woman” refers to what society at that time thought to be the ideal woman, carrying qualities of “modesty, submissiveness, physical weakness, limited education, and complete devotion to husband and home” (White, 2009, p. 1). Women were restrained in terms of sexuality, dress, language, and economic decisions. In Amy Gilman Srebnick’s The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, Mary rebels against these standards by being a single women that is also sexually active, however, her actions are what seemingly lead to her demise. Similarly, Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall also goes against gender norms. In her case, she earns her own economic independence through her writing and lives a more unconventional life as a mother, but faces repercussions from her family. Through the novels Ruth Hall and The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers, the main female characters revolt against being “True Women” through their daily actions and behaviors, however they’re each punished with consequences for trying to deviate from society’s path.

The patriarchal system of the Victorian Era severely limited women’s independence and control of their lives; a theme that dominates this text. Jane’s husband, John, the antagonist, represents the mores of their society, and treats Jane like a child. After returning to bed one evening, John questions her reasons awakening “ ‘What is it, little girl?’ he said. ‘Don’t go walking about like that-you’ll get cold’”

Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre embraces many feminist views in opposition to the Victorian feminine ideal. Charlotte Bronte herself was among the first feminist writers of her time, and wrote this book in order to send the message of feminism to a Victorian-Age Society in which women were looked upon as inferior and repressed by the society in which they lived. This novel embodies the ideology of equality between a man and woman in marriage, as well as in society at large. As a feminist writer, Charlotte Bronte created this novel to support and spread the idea of an independent woman who works for herself, thinks for herself, and acts of her own accord.

Literature in the past failed to represent women in an effective manner, erasing their self identity and relationships with one another but, certain female authors have attempted to create and demonstrate the bond between women and their relationships. This essay will analyze Virginia Woolf’s reading to “Chloe likes Olivia” from A Room of One’s Own and apply it to the novel Passing by Nella Larsen and the women relationships displayed in the text using textual evidence. Virginia Woolf’s reading to the statement “Chloe liked Olivia” is it was interesting to see Mary Carmichael, who is a well noted author, present a genuine relationship between the two females and them not being mentioned about through a man’s perspective. Woolf goes on to

Throughout history, female artists have not been strangers to harsh criticism regarding their artistic works. Some female artists are fortunate to even receive such criticism; many have not achieved success in sharing their works with the world. In Virgina Woolf’s third chapter of her essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf addresses the plight of the woman writer, specifically during the Elizabethan time period of England. Woolf helps the reader appreciate her view on how stifling and difficult this time period was for women and how what little creativity emerged would have been distorted in some way. Through a number of claims, examples and other literary techniques, Woolf is able to

This develops the idea that her future with this man as a married woman provided a stable lifestyle where she would not have to live by the rigid patterns of society, reinforcing a modern day feminist reader’s view of the expectations and restrictions placed on unmarried women during the Victorian era.

In her essay “In Search of a Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf used Shakespeare’s sister as a metaphor to explain the position of women in Elizabethan era. Since author finds it difficult to find any trace of women in the Elizabethan era, she creates a fictional character through imagination, and to feel situations that the women in Elizabethan society would have had to go through. Woolf compares fiction to a “spider’s web” (520) that permeates life “at all four corners” (520). Through this metaphor, she personifies narratives of women suffering as a spider’s web that cling to our material reality. For Woolf, our lived stories are a part of this web which can be changed, destroyed or, re-spin with our imagination. In my paper, I argue that Wolfe uses the metaphor of a spider’s web as a heuristic device to make a case for literacy analysis and fiction as tools for exercising narrative agency and challenging stories that deny us representation in this world. To illustrate this, she creates an imaginative character, named Judith Shakespeare, to surface the gender inequality in the Elizabethan era. For this purpose, she not only writes a new chapter of Elizabethan history that centers the perspective of the women, but she also gives voice to women of that era who, like Judith her main character, were silenced and delegitimized by the spider’s web of their time.

    To The Lighthouse exemplifies the condition of women when Woolf was writing and to some extent yet today. It offers a solution to remedy the condition of both men and women. To say the novel is a cry for a change in attitude towards women is not quite correct. It shows the plight of both men and women and how patriarchy is detrimental to both genders. Mrs. Ramsey. Both suffer from the unequal division of gender power in Woolf's society. Lily is also very much a product of society, yet she has new ideas for the role of women and produces one answer to the problems of gender power. Besides providing these examples of patriarchy, To The Lighthouse examines the tenacity of human