Essay, Research Paper: Aglimpsethroughthelookingglass

For centuries, women have sought out to endow oneself and society; to implode fiction; to create clearinghouses of ideas without the interference of man. Alas, the glass ceiling is broke; the door unlocked. In A Room of One s Own, Virginia Woolf skillfully, using the technique of stream of consciousness, discusses the problems of women writers. The journey she reveals illuminates our own journeys. Through the powerful use of stylistic techniques, Woolf illustrates insightful views towards male superiority, feminism, and liberation, as well as the historic barriers that prevented women from pursuing writing careers. Woolf expresses these views in a convincing, symbolic and poetic manner. Her wit and well-informed optimism bars against stupidity and prejudice. Virginia Woolf takes one on an erudite walk through a conversational novel that is lively, and enlightening.
Male superiority is a profound, psychological and physical hindrance to the prevalence of women. Historically, women were mentally, morally, and physically inferior to men. Woolf carefully demonstrates this through a poetic prose composed by Lady Winchilsea.
How are we fallen! Fallen by mistaken rules, and education s more than Nature s fools; debarred from all improvements of the mind, and to be dull, expected and designed; and if someone would soar above the rest, with warmer fancy, and ambition pressed, so strong the opposing faction still appears My lines decried, and my employment thought an useless folly or presumptuous fault
(Woolf A Room of One s Own 59)
Woolf clearly describes the injustice towards women. She also uses this idea of inferiority within the following symbolic passage: the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. (Woolf A Room 7) Convincingly, Woolf shows that once women are freed from male superiority, women can then begin to enjoy the benefits men have experienced for centuries. Again she describes how women are inferior through the allusion of a cat, The tailless cat, though some are said to exist in the Isle of man, is rarer than one thinks. It is a queer animal, quaint rather than beautiful. (Woolf A Room 15) Woolf scholarly supports her argument of inferiority with insight from well-known men:
I have told you the very low opinion in which you [women] were held by Mr. Oscar Browning. I have indicated what Napoleon once thought of you and what Mussolini thinks now I have copied out for your benefit the advice of the critic about courageously acknowledging the limitations of your sex. I have referred to Professor X and given prominence to his statement that women are intellectually, morally and physically inferior to men . . . (Woolf A Room 110)
Referring to others, particularly those with well-known reputations, such as Mussolini and Napoleon, Woolf persuades one to have faith in her argument that women were inferior to men.
In a condescending manner, Woolf suggests that the reason why there was no female Shakespeare, is not that women are biologically inferior to men, but that there was simply no room for women to develop themselves, symbolically speaking. She critiques contemporary male writing and states that it is too full of the I, which announces virility and masculinity. She also recognizes that women are inferior to men because of the weight from their fathers. (A Room 49)
Woolf offers solutions to women s mediocrity and repeatedly states her simple thesis that in order for a women writer to be successful, that she must have a room, money, encouragement, and confidence. Her final comment about the brilliant mind, reveals her own extraordinary lucidity and lack of self-preoccupation.
A Feminist is defined as a supporter of women s claims, and or the advocacy of women. Woolf critically emphasizes this belief, in a simple and poetic style, I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. (Woolf A Room 39) She uses repetition of the word need, and clear language to carefully illustrate feminism. Woolf also distinguishes the forgotten importance that Feminism is not only for, or about women, it is also for, and about men, because the world is composed of both sexes, and men suffer from the traditional male chauvinistic attitude as well. Woolf subtlety persuades this philosophy, and offers great vision. Indeed, Virginia Woolf was perhaps one of the first women to recognize feminism. She discusses how a woman writer seeks within herself "the pools, the depths, the dark places where the largest fish slumber. (Woolf Women and Writing 152) Woolf's creative illustration of this principle, was a hypothetical sister to Shakespeare, who, even with the same talents as her brother, would have never had the chances to display her talents to the world. Woolf suggests that there were plenty of women who were geniuses and creative. However in history, they were defined as the witches.
Any women 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, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. (Woolf A Room 51)
Feminism is also depicted in the following quotation: A thousand stars were flashing across the blue wastes of the sky. One seemed alone with an inscrutable society. (Woolf A Room 26) This clearly, yet symbolically, describes feminism. The wastes of the sky, represents how society is full of men, crowding the space, leaving no room for women. The one star that is alone, represents the whole of the female population. The inscrutable society demonstrates that society has become mysterious. Women have endured a battle with an unfair society. After centuries of suppression women will be supported and rise to have equal status. This is poetically illustrated in A Room of One s Own; There has fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear (Woolf A Room 15) This passage, amongst many cynical statements and ideas, foreshadows Woolf s hope and appreciation of feminism, in an idyllic manner.
Woolf also poetically and symbolically, expresses the barriers that have prevented women from writing fiction. Her main reasoning is based on how [women] used to spend most of their life either giving birth to, or nourishing children. The customs of women are briefly exhibited in one of Lady Winchilsea s poem. Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing play, are the accomplishments we should desire; to write, or read, or think, or to inquire, would cloud our beauty and exhaust our time. (Woolf A Room 60)
Although nourishing a child was traditionally sought to be a women s responsibility, if men had also spent more time raising the children, women may have been able to pursue writing. Thus, historically, men were the dominant barriers. Woolf symbolically stresses this by portraying women as looking glasses ; observers women have been witnesses to the gender inequalities throughout the years. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man (Woolf A Room 37) Woolf describes the efforts that were achieved and how men, like a wall, did nothing to lend a hand. Meetings were held; letters were read out; so-and-so has promised so much; on the contrary, Mr-won t give a penny. (Woolf A Room 22) Additionally, a quotation by the Duchess, poetically depicts the strife women baffle with, to cope with the everyday influence of men. Women live like Bats or Owls, labour like Beasts, and die like worms (Woolf A Room 62) These skillful comparisons reveal the endurance of women and how in the end, they die weak. Although these words were not those of Virginia Woolf, she evidently reveals inspiration through presenting her ideas as well as through her stylistic writing techniques. [She] gave acute pleasure in new ways, and pushed the light of the language a little further into the darkness. (Woolf A Haunted House 1)
Virginia Woolf uses the stream of consciousness technique to capture events of everyday life and the passage of time, as they are perceived in the mind of an actual person. Woolf s spirit crusades from page to page. The knowledge is never-ending. After all the strife and efforts of women have been exhausted, Woolf, like a good essayist reveals optimism, The shopwomen will drive an engine make them soldiers and sailors and engine-drivers and dock labourers Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. (Woolf A Room 42) Woolf poetically and symbolically, portrays the barriers of women writers, feminism and liberation and women s inferiority to men. She demonstrates an extraordinary ability to write in a mesmerizing and illuminating fashion, and inevitably gives proof as to why, a women must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. (Woolf A Room . 6)