Virginia Woolf's Different Perspectives

Virginia Woolf is often categorized as being an aesthetic writer. Most of her works played largely on the concept of suggestion. They addressed many social issues especially those regarding feminine problems. Woolf was acutely aware of her identity as a woman and she used many of writings as outlets for her frustrations. According to her doctrine, the subjugation of women is a central fact of history, a key to most of our social and psychological disorders (Marder 3). The two works I will focus on is A Room of One's Own and "A Society" from Monday or Tuesday. They are both works that challenge the roles of men and women.

Virginia Woolf, a notable English writer, presented an exceptional essay, A Room of One’s Own, which focuses on women straying away from tradition and focusing on their independence. With Woolf’s creative ways of thinking, her essay also correlates with Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour” and Alice Munro’s short story “The Office.” A Room of One’s Own emphasizes three major points, creating an image for women: gender inequality, a woman having money and a room to herself and the countless interruptions that can distract a woman in society. The two short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “The Office” illustrate the three central point’s Virginia Woolf makes in her essay A Room of One’s Own.

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.

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.

Few works address the complex lives of women and literature like Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, an essay that explores the history of women in literature through an investigation of the material and social conditions required for the writing of literature. Woolf, born in 1882, grew up in a time period in which women were only just beginning to gain significant rights. Likewise, the outbreak of WWI left a mark on the world that Woolf lived in and also affected the literary style of many writers at the time. In her essay, Woolf presents two passages that describe two different meals that she receives during two university visits; the first passage describes the first meal that was served at a men's college, while the second passage

Despite any futile resistance, every living creature eventually succumbs to death. Ultimately, death is part of living. Death is inevitable. Likewise, although a diminutive moth may appear to be insignificant and pathetic, it can symbolize the true, many connections between the duality of life and death and human beings. For instance, Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf illustrate similar, universal messages of the value of life through the metaphor of a moth. However, the manner in which they portray their themes and purpose varies, for their personal experiences and writing styles influence their provisions of life and death.

Despite any futile resistance, each living creature eventually succumbs to the forces of death. Ultimately, death is a part of living. Death is inevitable. Likewise, although a diminutive moth may appear to be insignificant and pathetic, it can symbolize the true connections between the duality of life and death and human beings. For instance, Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf illustrate similar, universal messages about the value of life through the metaphor of a moth. However, the manner in which they portray their themes and purpose varies, for their personal experiences and writing styles influence their perspectives of life and death.

Virginia Woolf, a woman from a slightly different time than Charlotte Gilman and Weir Mitchell, had Manic-Depressive Psychosis, which according to The Royal Society of Medicine Health Encyclopedia, is a “mood disorder” and the patient could be bi or unipolar (10). Woolf contributes her condition to what happened to her during her childhood, her mother died when Woolf was young, and she said that she was abused by her father and her half-brothers (2). But, according to The Royal Society of Medicine Health Encyclopedia, this “condition” may have been from the characters Woolf created as her characters and stories were a mystery (11). Even though she wasn’t given “The Rest Cure,” she had issues, she kind of diagnosed herself through her writings

Virginia Woolf takes the life of the seemingly insignificant lifeform, the daymoth, and expands it into a beautifully written poem-like essay. Rather than write simply concerning the phenomena she feels, Woolf symbolizes the moth as both the strength and futility of life and death. Her vivid narration style, energetic language, and the somber yet intriguing tone she uses, gives the reader deeper insight into the author’s fascination concerning the wonders of life and death.

Wendy Nicholson said in her lecture on A Room of One’s Own, at the period in which

The Contrast of Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker After reading the four essays assigned to this sequence, it becomes interesting to contrast two author's points of view on the same subject. Reading one professional writer's rewriting of a portion of another professional writer's essay brings out many of each of their characteristics and

Woolf and Wollstonecraft both wrote about the fact that women with a great mind, would not have survived in their time period. Wollstonecraft said “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”. Along with that, Woolf wanted to “see woman placed in a station in which she would advance, instead of retarding”. Both women were fighting for females to be given the chance to better themselves, rather than being forced to go insane. Just like them, women are having to fight for a chance to prove their brilliance. Feminism may not be as harsh as it use to be, but it still holds a lot of power over young girls today. Women

Of the many concepts Virginia Woolf has made in her works, the idea of “moments of being” in her autobiography, A Sketch of the Past, is of special interest because of its possible application to other works of literature which focus on the composition of life. After reading the fictitious Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, one could wonder how Woolf’s concept is evident or not so evident in Johnson’s narration to test the concept’s applicability. It seems that Johnson’s moments of clarity or “being” are reminiscent of Woolf’s own “moments of being” in the way their senses interacted with the memories and the manner with which those memories present themselves, particularly when Woolf hears of Valpy’s suicide and

People may find Woolf's theories outdated; the statement "For genius like Shakespeare's is not born among laboring, uneducated, servile people" would be met with controversy if published today (Woolf 46). It is important to remember that Woolf believes that money and personal independence go hand in hand with freedom of thought, and that poverty and its attendant troubles prevent such thought. She admits that brilliance can emerge from low working classes but is rare. Woolf is clearly at odds with any kind of "protest" literature, feeling that it reduces the "incandescent" talent of the writer (Woolf 56).

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.