Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and Virginia Woolf Essay

Ever since the days of World War I, women have been seen as second rate to men. They had to live up to many social standards that men didn’t have to and had strict guidelines on how to live their lives. This all changed when modernism deliberately tried to break away from Victorian Era standards in which women were subjugated to a lot more scrutiny. Ezra Pound, who was a large figure in the modernist movement, captured the spirit of the era in his famous line “Make it new!” Consequently, many writers started to experiment with many different and wild writing styles, which led to the short stories and poems we have today. The stories The Wife of His Youth and Mrs. Spring Fragrance were all written in this era of modernism. While they are written in a more traditional style of writing, both these stories have strong implications on feminism from the viewpoints of both male and female writers.

In Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning creates an independent, intelligent young woman. Barrett Browning successfully demonstrates the difficult obstacles women had to overcome in the Victorian period. There were preconceived ideas of what "proper" women were suppose to do with their life. Not that this idea has completely been surmounted in our time. Barrett Browning though is optimistic about the goals women can achieve. She wants to demonstrate to women that belief in themselves and their dreams is possible and preferable to the standard.

     Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a plain woman of the Victorian Era that was most remarkably gifted. She “was destined to become known to the world”(Preston xi). Elizabeth Barrett Browning became known for her poetry, because she showed marriages were her women character were often left emotionally unstable.

Power Struggles are very common is many marriages. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee, the relationship or marriage between George and Martha is based in power. The power struggle between George and Martha has become the basis of their relationship. Their love has turned into hate. The only connection they have is through their insults and the series of games they play. The power struggle between George and Martha develops is reveled and is resolved through out the play.

Woolf demonstrates how women writers have often failed in this because of our frustration and bitterness with a world that presented to us and our writing not welcome, or even indifference, but hostility (41). She makes it clear that if there is ever going to be a “Shakespeare’s sister,” we must---at least while we are writing---swallow that sense of having been wronged, for it stands as an impediment to our creativity. This is the mental freedom that women writers must attain.

It is impossible to discuss the role of women in literature without mentioning the influence of feminism. The later in the timeline one reads, the more prominent it becomes. Each new wave of feminism brings with it its own goals, yet it also continues to strive for some of the same goals as past generations because not everything is accomplished all at once. Although “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall and “Rubyfruit Jungle” by Rita Mae Brown, are two starkly different texts that strongly reflect the feminist eras in which they were written, they have some similarities as well.

Woolf contends that she is “on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen or Emily Bronte who…….mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift put her to” (53). Woolf uses many historical and literary examples such as Jane Austen and Emily Bronte numerous times in her work to contrast the fame and fortune of successful authors, with the unknown lives of “ghost writers.”

In the novel, Woolf delves into traditional female perspective, providing a social commentary on the existing sexism of her time. Women were expected to marry and bear children, and believe it to be the greatest fulfillment they could achieve. She believes it to be ignorant bliss when succumbing to the expectations of the “modernistic” society. Mary Datchet is Woolf’s own martyrly creation in the sense that she sacrifices her mental well being for the sake of the respect for herself as a person rather than a gender. Her happiness dies at the end along with the parallel of Katherine’s free will when they make their final decisions; therefore, creating a perpetual “night” over Mary’s life and an everlasting sun over Katherine’s. Through an eclipse of archetypes, we can see the black cloud with the silver lining. With

Therefore, this is how she thought the life for women would be like in the sixteenth century, any women born with a talent would end up being laughed up, mocked and ending their lives like the fictional character Judith. “A highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty” (Woolf).

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I love thee?" This poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of many she penned for her husband Robert Browning. Using the basic form of an Italian sonnet with its fourteen lines and strict rhyme scheme - she manages to produce a surprisingly passionate poem.

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born March 6, 1806 in Durham, England to Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. She was the eldest of twelve. Her father made the family fortune from a sugar plantation. In 1809, the Barretts moved to an estate called Hope End in England. Elizabeth Barrett’s childhood was spent happily at the family’s home in England. She had no formal education, learning solely from her brother’s tutor and from her continuous reading. She managed over the years to learn Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. She learned rapidly and began writing at an early age.

Virginia Woolf was, in simple terms, a person. She had many different components that made her who she was. She was a feminist. And mentally ill. She once said, “I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best these men can do is not talk about themselves anymore.” She thought men always got the to be the hero in things, they were always honored, rather than women. She felt that they shouldn’t get all the attention, and always talk about themselves. She wanted people to talk more about women being the hero, and women being honored. Virginia woolf was a important author in the 20th century because of her feminist views.

Woolf explains the difference in success between man and woman in two parts. She first explains that the values of women differ very often from the values of men, and goes on to say that in any case it is the masculine values that prevail and feminine values are devalued. (Woolf, 1929, 74) Masculine values soon became a part of society; as males were the only voices heard. Novels discussed males during the time of war, and spoke of their discoveries and contributions to the world. Since women’s voices were silenced by the need to mimic males, society never got to see the woman’s perspectives on matters. Consequently women altered their own values in “deference to the opinion of others.” (Woolf, 1929, 75) For Woolf there is a uniquely female way of writing—a woman's sentence. This is one of Woolf's most provocative claims. She argues that women see and feel and value differently than men, and that because of this they must also write differently. She praises Jane Austen, who had "devised a perfectly natural, shapely sentence proper for her own use and never departed from it." (Woolf, 1929,

From Enheduanna to Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte to J.K. Rowling. Woman have proved over and over again that the role of author and/or writer can suit females just as much as any man. Mansfield encouraged women to write and used herself as an example with her own writing to try to attract more female authors. Often, women are pictures as just people who birth babies, cook, clean, shopped and stayed around as house wives. Sometimes, they did not have a wide span of education. Even in the early 1900’s women didn’t often go to college, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that women began to attend college in equal numbers to men. Poet laureate Robert Southey said “Literature cannot be the business of a women’s life.” One of the key assumptions that Mansfield and other women modernists faced was the habit of presenting narrative fiction through male eyes and according to male values. Mansfield herself strived for everyone (not limited to just women) to do whatever they wanted. She encouraged people to break rules and branch out.

The narrator returns home disappointed that she hasn't found some piece of truth to explain the poverty that women don’t share with men. Woolf thinks she needs a historian to describe the conditions of women through history. Compared to men, woman’s lives seem non-existent. She describes fiction as being connected to life but as careful as a spider-web and, in