Virginia Woolf - Antonio M.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is one of the most popular and distinguished modernist literary writers of the 20th century, and a figure of the feminist movement. Woolf was born and raised in the Victorian Era, and was part of an intellectual family. Virginia’s father was one of the most popular writers and thinkers of his time. Despite her privileged socioeconomic background, she was not comfortable with the role society forced her into. Throughout her life, Woolf was concerned with the role of women in society. She contributed to gender equality through literary works such as the essay “A room of One’s Own.”

https://www.amreading.com/2016/11/07/why-i-love-virginia-woolf-and-you-might-too/

During the time Virginia Woolf grew up in it was still common for men and women to follow distinct gender roles and associated behavior.  Men were the providers and they dominated the public world of commerce, while women were in charge of the home’s duties. Thus, women’s roles in society were limited to be passive, unselfish and decorative (Woolf 4). Woolf’s essay notes a few of the ways women needed to behave to be in accordance with their roles in society. Not much has changed since Virginia Woolf’s time. Women are taught from a young age to follow specific rules that do not apply to boys. “A 1990 study done at the University of Michigan found that, beginning in pre-school, girls are being told to be quiet much more often than boys. Although boys were noisier than girls, girls were told  to speak softly or to use a ‘nicer’ voice about three times more often. Girls were encouraged to be small, quiet, and physically constrained” (Kilbourne 139).  Women are taught to be act in ways that are “ladylike.” But who decides what kind of behavior is ladylike and what is not? Woolf suggests that women’s roles and behaviors have been dictated by men, and are passed on from one generation to the next through the male-dominated culture of the society she lived in (and we still live in today).  

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As we have seen in class readings throughout the semester, no matter how powerful and beautiful women are, they will never be acknowledged for both. They will either be acknowledged for one or the other. “Culture stereotypes women by flattening the feminine into beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence-without-beauty; women are allowed a mind or a body but not both” (Wolf 59). Women are heavily objectified by media daily. And when women are smart and hard-working, their sexuality is usually taken away from them. Very rarely are women portrayed as both good-looking and smart by media.Virginia Woolf’s first priority and main goal was that woman should obtain access to professions. Even though Virginia had the ability to get a good education, she also had to remain in the designated placefor women in her day. For example, her job was to sit through and plan tea parties for the wives of other wealthy men, because that’s what women were supposed to do while men were discussing their business plans. She was forced to keep her intellectual potential to herself. In her essay “A Room of One’s Own”, Woolf states that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Woolf 4). Thus, she claims that women should have the right to basic working conditions, like leisure time, privacy and financial independence, in order for them to channel their intellectual potential. Woolf highlighted that women do not have the opportunities that men have to live out their intellectual freedom and create art.

Overall, Virginia Woolf is considered a pioneer of feminist literary criticism, because she was concerned with many issues like the social and economic context of women’s writing, the gendered nature of language, the need to go back through literary history and establish a female literary tradition, and the societal construction of woman. Woolf was genuinely committed to women's rights and troubled by their position in society throughout her whole life. As a result of her commitment to women’s issues, Woolf has had a major impact on the feminist movement.

Works Cited

Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising.

Wolf, Naomi. “Culture.” The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1989. Print