Rhetorical Analysis Of Professionss For Women By Virginia Woolf

Throughout history, women have been regarded as of lesser value than men particularly in the public sphere. This is the result of gender stratification. Gender stratification refers to the issue of sexism, “or the belief that one sex is superior to the other” (Carl et al., 2012, p. 78). The theory that men are superior to women is essential to sexism. Sexism has always had negative consequences for women. It has caused some women to avoid pursuing successful careers typically described as “masculine”—perhaps to avoid the social impression that they are less desirable as spouses or mothers, or even less “feminine.”

Dorment convinces the audience with statistics and his own personal stories for example, he says, ’60 percent of the bachelors degrees in this country go to women.’ (Dorment 698) He is not saying that women are smarter but in today’s world we usually think of doctors as men and nurses as women. Dorment also says, “unmarried childless women under thirty earn 8 percent more than males.’ (Dorment 698) I believe that this is true women are believed to be weaker ones and tend to rely on men and that there are more jobs out there for men. Women are just supposed to stay at home and do the cleaning and take care of the kids. Society is forcing this on little girls growing up and it needs to stop. Dorment says, ‘institutional sexism and pay discrimination are still ugly realities.’ Why? Why do women make less, why are they forced to be stay at home housekeepers? Society we need to get a grip on making men and women equal instead of putting gender roles on everything, or we will destroy the upcoming generations.

In her memoir, Virginia Woolf discusses a valuable lesson learned during her childhood fishing trips in Cornwall, England. To convey the significance of past moments, Woolf incorporates detailed figurative language and a variety of syntax into her writing. Woolf communicates an appreciative tone of the past to the audience, emphasizing its lasting impact on her life.

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.

Over the past few decades, great strides have been made by women in the workplace. This increased number in women in the workplace does not mean equality however. Even with equal qualifications and achievements, women are still not given all the opportunities that men have. The chapter in the textbook, “Gender at Work”, shows us more of these inequalities in the workplace. Such inequalities cause gender segregation of jobs and can be linked with the pay inequality in the labor force. Even in jobs that are predominantly filled by women, men earn more than women. Women are often stereotyped as being family focused and not as able to travel, therefore they tend to get passed up for promotions (Garson p.353). This invisible barrier that keeps women from moving up the executive ladder is referred to as the “glass ceiling” (Baxter and Wright p. 346). Women also tend to do more domestic work, or unpaid labor and caregiving. This extra unpaid work is referred to as “the third shift” and is largely rested on the shoulders of women (Gersel p. 352). Consequently, this seems to be one of the biggest things holding women back from taking on jobs that are normally considered male

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 Virginia Woolf’s speech “Professions for Women”, it employs various techniques in order to get her argument across. Throughout the speech Virginia Woolf brings forward a problem that is still relevant today: gender inequality. Woolf’s combination brings of extended metaphors, irony, vivid imagery, anaphora and repetition emphasizes her philosophical ideal of supporting gender equality.

Virginia Woolf, an avid woman novelist of the early twentieth century, faced many difficulties on her journey to becoming a successful writer. In her speech, which she delivers to the National Society for Women’s Service, she recounts her experiences as both a newly acquainted journalist and already established professional, all while giving detailed accounts of her struggles with the ghosts of oppression. These personal experiences not only help to establish and defend her credibility, they also serve as a means of developing her perspective on women’s functionality in successful careers. In addition, Woolf utilizes various rhetorical devices, such as the extended metaphor and parallelism, to portray the constant struggles of women in the workforce. She attempts to shed light on what obstructs all social advancement for women – the Victorian ideal of femininity – while encouraging her audience to confront this internal obstacle. Though she intended for her speech to be advice for women in any and all professions who are facing their own internal battles against oppression, Woolf insists her story is only one of many that have yet to be told.

On a broader aspect, it says men and women are equal. Though at a bottom level, women are still struggling to occupy the same status as men in the outer world. Stratification between the two genders is seen everywhere including the household or the workplace. Even today, women still earns less as compared to men involved in the same profession. Like a male physician makes $140,000, while a female in the same profession makes $88,000. Statisticians at the US census bureau looked at almost 821 occupations. After adjusting for workers’ ages, education and work experience, they found a substantial gender gap in the earnings of the workers. Scholars at the Census Bureau studied several characteristics and after taking into

A woman is given limited freedom. Something as simple as a room could give her a sense of liberty. In Virginia Woolf's article, she claims that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Woolf suggests that having a room literally allows women to have their own space to write, but figuratively traps them in their own thoughts due to a lack of freedom. In the works of Jamaica Kincaid, Virginia Woolf, and Alice Walker, the female figures have shown how their own thoughts, reflection, and creativity could be used as a sense of freedom.

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.

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.”

It talks about how females usually stop their schooling after receiving a master’s degree and do not often continue through college to receive a PHD. According to this article, since most females do not usually get their doctorate degree, maybe this is why the field is dominantly females. Employers do not have to pay females as much if they do not have their doctorate degree and the article also mentions that most men have their doctorate but, the article also states that women with identical degrees still make less every year. In 2015 the difference between male and female pay was roughly $17,802. It seems through the years dating back to 1982, women always made less than men but every year the difference increased. It bothers me that women are making a lot less money then men especially if they do have the same degree but since I do not have statistics, I cannot determine the reason. It bothers me because the Lilly Ledbetter Act was put in place to rid unfair pay amongst gender but it seems to still be going on in this field. This article definitely makes me want to strive and not stop until I achieve my doctorate degree, and it

Post World War I London society was characterized by a flow of new luxuries available to the wealthy and unemployment throughout the lower classes. Fascinated by the rapidly growing hierarchal social class system, Virginia Woolf, a young writer living in London at the time, sought to criticize it and reveal the corruption which lay beneath its surface. Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s fourth novel, was born in 1925 out of this desire precisely. A recurring focus in many of Woolf’s major novels is the individual and his or her conscious perceptions of daily life. Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf uses this technique, known as a “stream-of-consciousness,” to trace the thoughts of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith during one day in London five years after the Great War. It is exactly this narrative technique which allows Woolf to compare the lives of these two characters which belong to different social classes to argue that social placement has a negative effect on one’s life and psychological being.

This passage provides a critique of gender, but Woolf's act of undermining her own representational and syntactic styles introduces a deep ambiguity into the narrative.