04. Feminism in Virginia Woolf portrayed in Mrs. Dalloway

Feminism is the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way.¹ 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 is considered an important feminist writer. As we can observe, women, who live in a patriarchal society, – such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Flush or Rachel Vinrace in The Voyage Out –  have an important role in her works.

Regarding to Mrs. Dalloway, there are some characters, fragments or situations that may reveal the feminism in the author, so let’ s analyse a few of them.

1. Characters

First of all, the novel shows us two different characters that seems to be totally opposite: Mrs. Dalloway and Sally Seton. The first one is a distinguised woman of the high society in London. The second one is poor, liberal, Bohemian, rebellious. Sally Seton only appears at the end of the novel, but she is usually in Mrs. Dalloway’ s mind. Thus, thoughts of the protagonist -free life, rebellion against the  society or future plans of change- point out that both characters are not so different, therefore they are very similar.

There they sat, hour after hour… talking about life, how they were to reform the world. They meant to found a society to abolish private property.²

As we can look at this fragment, it seems that these women planned to change the established society, and it was a patriarchal one.  I have to stress Mrs. Dalloway’ s feelings: she feels happy regarding these events with Sally Seton.  So, it is significant in respect of the ideas of the protagonist.

2. Passages

Secondly, a few other passages of the novel indicates how the society in London was in the twentieth century, just after the World War I. As I have already said, it was a patriarchal society where men lead and women don’ t, that is, there are inequalities between both genres in social, political and economic aspects. Two examples of these fragments of the novel is as follows:

She accused Hugh Withbread, of all people (and there he was, her old friend Hugh, talking to the Portuguese Ambassador), of kissing her in the smoking-room to punish her for saying that women should have votes. Vulgar men did, she said.³

Sir William’ s heart though 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 back⁴

3. Virginia Woolf

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.⁵

These words of the author in her essay A Room of One’ s Own criticize the fact that men put women on pedestals where they are only allowed to do certain, preferably womanly things. In a man’s imagination, the female creature represents the perfect human being but in reality the man is high above the woman and his superiority is evident.⁶

After presenting this information, I will display an interesting discussion on the ideology of the writer or the real meanings of her writings.

On the one hand, Naomi Black supports  Woolf’ s feminism by stating: “she cared most about […] the larger social structures that cause the battles”.⁷

On the other hand, Elaine Showalter refutes Woolf’ s feminism. It is false, in her opinion, that Virginia was a feminist writer.⁸ I mean,  readers might see only in Virginia Woolf a portrait of the society, other of her topics, because the writer presents both female and male genres. And it is possible because feminism in, for example, Sally Seton joined in this society, twentieth century in London. In short, Virginia Woolf critics the established society in general.

However, information about Virginia Woolf say that she read litterary works by important women writers like Jane Austen or Emily Brönte, who were against the patrialchal society, too. Also, some about her life supports that she is a feminist author as well as too many fragments of her works.

As an exemple, we can see what Woolf suggests women, in A room of one’s own, not to allow men to talk about their expierences, but they should talk about themselves:

For we think back through our mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to them for pleasure. Lamp, Browne, Thackery, Newman, Sterne, Dickens, De Quincey – however it may be – never helped a woman yet, though she may have learnt a few tricks of them and adapted them to her use.⁹

1. Feminism. English Dictionary & Thesaurus.  University of Cambridge, n.d. 16 May 2013. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/feminism
2. Virginia Woolf. Mrs.Dalloway.  London: Penguin Books, 1996. Print, pg. 38.
3. 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. 2257.
4. 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.
5. Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own ; Three Guineas. London: Penguin Books, 1993. Print, pg. 56.
6. Ute Kathmann. Supervisor: Elisabeth Friis. Virginia Woolf and the F-Word: On the Difficulties of  Defining Woolf’s (Anti-) Feminism. Lund University, Centre for Languages and Literature. n.d. 8 May, 2013. http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=2858555&fileOId=2858571
7. Black, Naomi. Virginia Woolf as Feminist. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004. Print, p.172.
8. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature Of Their Own. British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Print, p. 282.
9. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own ; Three Guineas. London: Penguin Books, 1993. Print, pp. 68-9.