Virginia Woolf Women

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.

To begin, one notable difference between the two authors’ perspective is that Woolf does not include her immediate surroundings. She excludes

To begin, at the start of this speech Woolf utilized various understatements about herself, and when combined they both contributed vastly to helping Woolf convey her message. For example, in the first paragraph, Woolf poses a rhetorical question that states, “It is true I am a woman; it is true I am employed; but what professional experiences have I had?” Woolf is considered to be one of the most significant modernists of her century, yet in this question, she seems to believe that she is not worthy of giving this speech. This helps to convey her message because to the audience, Woolf seems more like a peer than a superior figure. By making herself seem more like a peer, Woolf has effectively made herself more trustworthy and relatable to the audience. Continuing, in the second paragraph, Woolf makes yet another understatement of herself by stating, “But to tell you my story--it is a simple one.” Considering that Woolf is one of the most valuable modernists of her century, she is anything but simple. Yet by making this statement to the audience, she is allowing them insight into her personality and what she thinks of herself. Through this statement, Woolf has proved her humility and that she views herself as just another human being. The first understatement allowed her to be more

In the first sentence when Woolf is talking about the men’s dinner she says things such as “invariably memorable” and “luncheon parties” while the first sentence about the woman’s luncheon simply says, “Here was my soup”. The short sentence structure emphasizes the lack of enthusiasm that woman are met with when it comes to their spot in this culture. The level of writing in which is used inherently shows the level of standards men and woman are held to in this

The theme of Woolf's essay places emphasis on the fact that women need money and a room of one's own to write successfully. Woolf's description of a man's meal and a woman's meal address the issue of material resources that women often lack. By using literary elements such as sentence length, figurative language, and diction, Woolf succeeds in presenting the financial and material differences between men and women. Woolf leaves little doubt about her views and convictions and establishes a theme about women that will be

Woolf’s essay ends with the moth giving up trying to live as it perishes. She builds up at the ending by appealing to human emotions or pathos by developing a depressing tone. She writes, “He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the windowpane..” Here the audience can see how

Woolf notes that “the nature of the biscuits to be dry” is a common occurrence for their dinners. Conversely, the women were given a water jug to pass around for their refreshment unlike the luxury of wine the men were able to enjoy. Once again, this treatment implies that mean are at a higher status than women. Describing the end of the meal, Woolf states, “That was all. The meal was over”.

The differences between men’s and women’s colleges were considerable in Virginia Woolf’s day. Rather than proclaim this in an ordinary way, Woolf uses the separate meals served at each college to illustrate the differences between the schools. Woolf makes a far more forceful, thoughtful distinction between the male and female schools through such contrast than if she had simply numbered their variations. Woolf details the relative poverty of the women’s school, and therefore women’s position in society, through varied sentence structure, expression and imagery between the descriptions of the meals. Virginia Woolf uses different structures in each passage to portray the judgement within the educational system to expose this part of society.

In the short piece written by Virginia Woolf, “Two Cafeterias,” Woolf discusses her meals at a men’s college and a women’s college. Woolf’s underlying attitude toward women’s place in society can be seen in both the men’s passage and women’s passage. The men’s meal sounded delicious: partridges, sauces and salads, rice and tapioca with wine as the men’s beverage. The men appreciated and savored each moment of their meal as there was “No need to hurry… No need to be anybody but oneself.” The men did not have a care in the world besides what was going on around them and their friends; furthermore they all sat by the windows in a cushioned seat with a lighted cigarette enjoying life.

As Mary tries to gather more information to support her argument on the topic of women and fiction, she runs into Professor Von X, the author of a book on the mental, moral, and physical inferiority of women. In the passage from A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf utilizes figurative language, such as metaphor, and historical figures to assert that men need women to be inferior in order to maintain their own sense of superiority.

Throughout Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf uses the characters Clarissa and Lucrezia not only to further the plot of the story but to make a profound statement about the role of wives in both society and their marriages. While these women are subjected to differing experiences in their marriages, there is one common thread that unites each of their marriages: oppression. These women drive the story of Mrs. Dalloway and provide meaning and reason in the lives of the men in the story; however, these women are slowly but surely forced to forsake their own ambitions in order to act in accordance with the social standards set in place by marriage for women. For women outside of many modern cultures, marriage has been a necessity for a woman’s safety and security, and it required her to give up her freedom and passions and subjected her to an oppressed lifestyle. Ultimately, through the wives in Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf communicates that marriage is an institution where in women are forced to suppress their individual desires and passions in order to serve their husband and further his own ambitions as first priority.

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.

Virginia Woolf’s writing pattern is beautifully interwoven in and out of the thoughts of each character. She has the ability to portray random, yet structured working of the mind giving the reader a sense of mental time. The past, present, and future are constantly intertwining, which allows the reader to enter different frames in Mrs. Dalloway’s life in such a short period of time. This method draws a connection with how people think, feel, and dream in all different directions. Instead of following a basic plot, Woolf expresses a certain point of view in Mrs. Dalloway by digging inside the minds of each character. She constantly uses stream of consciousness, which gives insight for the different characters. These moments of memories and present situations allow the reader to develop a full understanding of Clarissa’s character in only a single day. Woolf successfully illustrates how time can sufficiently reveal one’s character, but in particular uses Clarissa to show that it is impossible to escape the past because of the present reality of time constantly on her shoulders.

While Woolf makes very good points throughout her essay based many interesting points, one cannot help

of Woolf’s essay. Though her thesis is confined to fiction and does not extend into any