The Troubles of Du Tenth

At the time, a room of one’s own was written, women did not have the same equal opportunity as men. She sees that society is in favor of men. Throughout Woof’s writing, she develops an argument on the difference of how society viewed women and viewed men. She begins by establishing the differences in education. She demonstrations that women did not have equal opportunity as men by telling a story that she made up about William Shakespeare sister. Woolf questioned if Shakespeare had a sister Judith with the same talent as him, would she be able to show her work like he did? Clearly, she would not be given the same opportunity. She stated, “This may be true or it may be false—who can say?—but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare’s sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village…” (woolf 366). meaning that if women at the time has that kind of talent like hers they would be silenced because to want that kind of work would be impossible and would end in catastrophic for a female. Therefore, Woof argues that society suffered an immeasurable loss, because society did not allow women to create their own expressions. Judith’s voice would have been lost because society wouldn’t allow her to use it. Consequently, no one

It is true, perhaps, that women are the subset of humanity whose rights had been the longest stripped of them, and who had been abused the worst and for the longest time. Even today, many people believe that women still do not have the equality that ought to be afforded them. Since women first started making steps to approach that ideal equality, they have used various means, including literature, to further their cause. Both Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince, as well as Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen, use language of Christian rhetoric to simultaneously cast their characters and themselves as sinners and the

In Didier Eribon’ Returning to Reims and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own, while both authors focus on their own ancestors’ oppression there is an intersectionality between their studied subjects: the discussion of women appears when Eribon talks about the working class, and the discussion of the working class appears when Woolf talks about women. When examines closer on this overlap, it becomes clear that both Eribon and Woolf would agree that there is a greater oppression faced by women of the working class than simply men of the working class or women of the upper class, because these women not only need to bear the destitute physical environment that plagues the working class, but also the crushing power that men exert on women.

Historically, women faced many struggles with not being viewed as strong, independent, and intelligent. They were limited to just being a wife, unable to work, and not valued for anything other than their sacrifices. In 1931, Novelist Virginia Woolf spoke about these issues to the Women’s Service League. Woolf used rhetoric to effectively speak to her audience; the rhetorical devices of allusion, parallelism, and imagery furthered her argument and encouraged her audience to construct their own position in society rather than conform to accepted roles.

Virginia Woolf saw it the same way; in how women of a time before the eighteenth century had little to no history of prominent women as literary artists or in general. In her essay, Woolf states that there is very little mention in history of women, and if mentioned they usually happen to be a royal lady such as an Elizabeth or Mary. A middle-class woman could never participate in such a movement of acknowledgment, even if she had brains and character to dispense. No average Elizabethan woman ever just wrote her story, regardless of the circumstance of the era, because she would have been “snubbed, slapped, lectured, and exhorted”(Jacobus 702). It was proven that there are just few exceptions in evidence, such as women’s letters (Jacobus 695-696).

The story "Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger" was intriguing to me. There are many mysteries that occur throughout the story. As I was reading the story I caught myself making predictions of what was going to happen. One thing that caught my attention was when Li Jia fell in love with Du Tenth. Li Jia sells her over to a stranger on the bases of angering his father and a way to please his father.

I believe this is a story about the secret and repressed desires of women and their freedom. It is a feminist piece of renewal and hope. In the late 19th century women were still being based off their husband's property(s) and rights. Women played "traditional" roles, society expected women to be family- oriented, and they were pressured into being a typical house wife.

In her book, she expressed her views on woman, as a reasonable human being, taking into the consideration the political as well as social realm. Throughout the book she discusses what woman can do, what are her abilities, and how she is seen in society, explaining the artificial status given by man as a weaker sex (Freedman, 2007), a frivolous creature concerned only with beauty and idle pleasure, who is a slave of passion, and consequently more useless member of society (Wollstonecraft, 1996); and how education arises as a crucial factor for woman independence, empowerment, and for woman and man to be righteous and moral

An important piece of literature that covers the topic of feminism is entitled, "Working For Judith Shakespeare: A Study In Feminism,” by Varley and Erdman. They discuss their thoughts on women writers and how women write against a society that did not want women to write. In addition they share Virginia Woolf’s thoughts on how feminism plays into a female writer. She states that oppressed women will write about themselves instead of their characters and that doing this will overshadow the importance of the story by the need to voice their oppression. They define feminism as “the belief in the right of women to have equal status with men as we live and participate in the world together” (Varley and Erdman). Furthermore, Varley and Erdman share

The day’s society, especially in the west is making a woman superior, but in other cultures women still inferior to men. Wollstonecraft in her introduction to A Vindication of the Rights

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.

Men denying women their right to an education they contradicted themselves when they utilize their wives intellect in secret. Being an educated woman left to tend to the family, was also responsible for completing his work to only have him take the credit. Even with writing books, a woman being the real author had to give the credit to a man. With so many limitation it is understandable the need for privacy. How could a woman learning affect a man's way of life? Women couldn't have their thoughts and ideas to themselves. Even the mind was suppressed for the advancement of men, Woolf in her book shares (35)

All three of these writings carry a similar message, but communicates their point through different means. These two women are trying to stress the importance of knowing about women in the past, so that women in the future will have a fighting chance to bring change. Virginia Woolf in her writing, A Room of One’s Own Making, tries to inspire women to keep pushing for their rights by pointing out the injustices of past women. She does this by uncovering something that is very obvious, but hardly anyone has ever known to look for the injustice done to women in history before the 18th century. Because there is no recorded history of what women's life was like before the 18th century, Woolf instead looked and the history of men and inferred the

In this story, Woolf is not blaming men for why women do not have equal opportunities as men,

As one of the earliest feminist writers, Mary Wollstonecraft faced a daunting audience of critics ready to dispel her cry for the rights of women. Her powerful argument calling for equality in a society dominated by men was strong, and her ideas withstood a lot of criticism to become one of the most important feminist texts. Her argument was simple and illustrates a solution to the inequality in society. The foundation of this argument is the idea of education and how independent thought is necessary to live a virtuous and moral life. In the present state of society, women are seen as inferior to men and held in a state of ignorance. The worst effect of this