9. Feminist ideas reflected on Woolf’ s works

Women require full access to economic and political rights in order to promote reforms that will use women’ s history and experience as a basis for reconstruction of the world shared by all human beings.1

Feminism is the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way.2 It is an ideology whose aim is to get social, political and economic iguality between both women and men. In the 19th and the early 20th century, there were the most important movement in UK.

Virginia Woolf highlights women in her works – Mary Beton in A Room of One’ s Own, Mrs. Browning in Flush or Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway – depicting her thoughts, regards and feelings as in these cases. Nowadays, the writer is an icon in the feminism movement, because lots of writers have determined this. However, there are some people who defend that Virginia Woolf wasn’ t a feminist writer. Through my previous analysis – such as the character of Carissa or Mr. Barret, as well as my explanation about A Room of One’ s Own and the term of Androgyny -, I am going to investigate this. In other words, this section is the meeting of all sections, so its result will be determinant.

1. Feminism

In A Room of One’ s Own by Woolf, the author displays the readers a feminist ideology and an androgynous mind. Both ideas are very similar, but siffer a little. Feminism, as we just know, requires equal rights, power or oppotunities in female and male genre. Angrogyny is a strategy to accomplished feminist ideas. It seems to be an escape from the confontration between both genres.

We can observe too many examples of both ideas in the three works. Focusing on feminism, we will read first a passage of Flush“If only Mr. Barrett could hear the tone in which she welcomed this usurper, the laugh with which she greeted him, the exclamation which she took her hand in his!”Virginia Woolf, through this fragment, shows us the superiority of men over women. Mrs. Browning, of course, has fewer rights than Mr. Browning. Through this sentence, the author critics the patriarchal society that opressed female genre.

According to Naomi Black, “The goal is more than just equality or equal treatment. Virginia Woolf belongs among the social feminists, because of her valorization of women’ s “civilisation” as a basis for social and political transformation.”4 Through this sentence, the writer is claiming the feminism in Woolf.

Sir William’ s heart thouh concealed, as she mostly is, under some plausible disguise; some venerable name; love, duty, self sacrifice. […] what it was really painful to believe – that the poor lady lied. Once, long ago, she had caught salmon freely: now, quick to minister to the craving which lit her husband’ s eye so oilily for dominion, for power, she cramped, squeezed, pared, pruned, drew back.5 

In addition, the previous parragraph is another example of repressed women that Woolf portrays in the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Through these words, the writer criticizes again the established patriarchal society, therefore it is considered within feminism.

It is repeated in the following parragraph in A Room of One’ s Own, where Woolf demands the fact that men put women on pedestals where they are only allowed to do certain, preferably womanly things.

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively, she is of the highest importance; practically, she
is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She
dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents
forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in
literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her
husband.6

Finally, Quentin Bell, Virginia’ s nephew, supported that feminism in Woolf came from the sexual abuses which she suffered, so she was definitely feminist according her nephew. “This anxiety toward sexuality and the abhorrence of lust and aggression, which Virginia understandably carried within her, are painfully apparent in the complex natures of her characters.”7

2. Androgyny

One has a profound, if irrational, instinct in favour of the theory that the union of man and woman makes fot the greatedt satisfaction, the most complete happiness. But the sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind coresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness? And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’ s brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’ s brain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-ooperating. If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mins is androgynous.8

Being as Virginia Woolf portrayed in her works the society in general, there are some reviewer that refuse that idea of feminism in Woolf. Acoording to their theory, the author criticizes both female and male genre. Her demand for equaly between women and men highlight, of course, but criticizing society, not only men. As the previous parragraph (which I have already used) presents clearly what the proposal by Virginia was: androgynous mind.

According to Elizabeth Wright, “Androgyny, for Virginia Woolf, was a theory that aimed to offer men and women the chance to write without consciousness of their sex – the result of which would ideally result in uninhibited creativity.”9 

An example of those reviewers who support androgyny and refuse feminism is Elaine Showalter. She refutes Woolf’ s feminism. It is false, in her opinion, that Virginia was a feminist writer.10 Readers should see only in Virginia Woolf a portrait of the society, other of her topics, because the writer presents both female and male genres. Woolf displays an androgynous mind to combat inequealities.

 

1. Naomi Black. Virginia Woolf as Feminist. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004. Print, pg. 10.
2. FeminismEnglish Dictionary & Thesaurus.  University of Cambridge, n.d. 16 May 2013. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/feminism
3. Virginia Woolf. Flush: Biography. London: Penguin, 1995. Print, pg. 42.
4. Naomi Black. Virginia Woolf as Feminist. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004. Print, pg. 11.
5. Stephen Greenblatt (Gen. Ed.)The Norton Anthology of English Literature: the Twentieth Century and after. 9th ed.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. Print, pg. 2213.
6. Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own ; Three Guineas. London: Penguin Books, 1993. Print, pg. 56.
7. Quentin Bell. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. London: Hogarth, 1972. Print, pg. 26.
8. Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own ; Three Guineas. London: Penguin Books, 1993. Print, pg. 88.
9. Elizabeth Writh. Re-evaluating Woolf’ s Androgynious Mind. University os St. Adrews. Web. http://www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate.english/ElizabethWrightArticleIssue14.htm#_edn1
10. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature Of Their Own. British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Print, p. 282.
 


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