Characterist Virginia Woolf's The Angel Of The House

Gender roles have been a hotly debated topic in the most recent years, especially the role of women in society. Women have had set expectations that they are believed to conform to, which is shown in many pieces of film and literature. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the life of a man in the upper class in the 1920’s, as well as women in the 1920’s. The movie The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman, visually explains the treatment and expectations of women, and especially focuses on the “damsel in distress” stereotype.. Roxane Gay’s “Bad Feminist” explains the stereotypes against women and ways women can come together and fight these constraints. Based on these sources, societal expectations take away from each individual’s identity, forcing women to conform to society's standards. In order to fight against these expectations, women have banded together and formed movements against these standards.

    I chose to compare and contrast two women authors from different literary time periods.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) as a representative of the Victorian age (1832-1901) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) as the spokeswoman for the Modernist (1914-1939) mindset.  Being women in historical time periods that did not embrace the talents and gifts of women; they share many of the same issues and themes throughout their works - however, it is the age in which they wrote that shaped their expressions of these themes.  Although they lived only decades apart their worlds were remarkably different - their voices were muted or amplified according to the beat of society's drum.

The author uses clear diction when she depicts the unique metaphors of the Angel in the House. By telling the story of the Angel of the House, she showed extreme disgust for the woman who were ever in her situation in which she was “bothered” and “tormented” to ignore her calling. Although the Angel was ultimately “pure” Woolf killed her. Woolf symbolically kills the Angel in the House and tells her audience that all women must take responsibility for killing her too. “Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.” Saying this empowers her audience, and Woolf achieves one of her foremost goals of the speech in informing women that they have the power to extricate themselves from patriarchy. Men are not going to consider women as human beings until women are willing to fearlessly assert themselves.

In the passage in the excerpt from “I Am a Woman” (1862) by Mary Abigail Dodge, the use of various rhetorical devices are evident throughout the text. The intended purpose of this text is to display her writing skills for an audience that is not keen on women’s influence in the literary sphere. Through the use of rhetorical strategies such as diction, imagery, and emotional appeal (pathos), Dodge forms her argument by asserting that women are legitimate writers.

In the quote, Woolf is discussing the confidence of women. Since the job of a woman is basically to be inferior to men, women are losing confidence. Women are constantly struggling to do what they want as they require, “gigantic courage and strength”. Wolf believes that men have purposefully made women inferior in order to reinforce their own confidence. Thus, this lack of confidence not only led to lack of quality life for women but also led to a lack of writing. However, even with this lack confidence women continue to persist and do everything they can to write. Woolf believes that if women did have more money and confidence, then they would not have to be so inferior and get married to men so early on. Woolf believes she could have done what she wanted as she would have been financially stable and not be reliant on others. Thus, Woolf could have been the boss of herself with freedom and time. With this freedom and time, Woolf and other women could have had the opportunities to produce the works they wanted to and get it published.

Back in the day almost everyone viewed woman to be the person who cleans, cooks, has children, and obeys her husband. Even woman themselves had this view hammered into their minds at such a young age, the views that women are inferior to men. This stigma of woman can be found traced throughout Virginia Woolf’s essay of two meals, a meal for men and a meal for women at a college. She uses numerous composition techniques and effectively disperses them throughout her narrative. By doing so, she accurately demonstrates her views on society’s stigma of a woman's role in an eloquent manner.

“I’m a woman…Phenomenal woman, that’s me.” This quote from Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman” characterizes the common theme between the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the speech, “Ain’t I a Woman”, by Sojourner Truth, and “Phenomenal Woman”. The common theme between these three different pieces is the idea of a strong, independent woman, which ties into feminism and the concept of being equal to men. Even though these three pieces are each diverse genres, they are all conveying the same general theme in their own way. Throughout any of these texts, it is evident that the authors are pushing the idea that a female is not inferior to any man just because they have a different body structure or a different gender.

Reading literature, at first, might seem like simple stories. However, in works like William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Mansfield's “Miss Brill,” and Kate Chopin's “The Storm,” the female protagonists are examples of how society has oppressive expectations of women simply because of their gender.

Today the equality between men and woman is closer then it ever has before in history, with women CEO’s and stay at home dads. This happened because of the strong woman in history fighting for the same rights as man, private property, creative freedom, and the power to use their intellect. Virginia Woolf is one of those ladies arguing that, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." She believes that women are locked in some sort of intellectual prison and not being able to have money or privacy keeps them locked, unable to blossom intellectually.

In Virginia Woolf’s speech “Professions for Women” she uses rhetorical appeal towards women’s abilities to do anything a man can do, she uses an overall good amount of rhetorical devices that help the reader to picture & experience what she’s feeling and wanting us to see.

Reflecting upon their role in society, women in literature are often portrayed in a position

Woolf believes that women are different from men both in their social history as well as inherently, and that each of these differences has had important effects on the development of women 's writing.

  . for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." (Woolf 91)

Jane Eyre is a novel written by Charlotte Brontë. It is distinctly a female Bildungsroman, as it follows the progress and growth of Jane’s character on her quest for selfhood and independence in a society that tries its best to impress upon her the roles and expectations of women in the Victorian era (which is neatly packaged in the figure of the ‘Angel-in-the-house’.) This is something with which this essay seeks to engage by looking at female figures which feature prominently in Jane’s life, how those who embrace the figure of ‘Angel-in-the-house’ are treated and viewed, versus those who do not. Furthermore, important male figures will also be looked at in order to understand Jane’s own feelings to the ‘Angel-in-the-house’ figure and how she approaches it, as well as how the Byronic hero might relate – if it even does.

The title of my project is Virginia Woolf as a feminist in reference to Mrs. Dalloway.