Alban Celaj
03/14/18
Prof: Melgard
English 1121
In Woolfs writings, Virginia Wolf is trying to advise the audience
that fiction is not a credible source in determining how women where once treated. Virginia Woolf instead advises that we should instead turn to historians to see how women were once treated and how they are treated today. Of course respectfully to make an analysis and connection to how women were once treated and how that treatment has evolved. Virginia Woolf explains that women were not treated better before, in fact they were treated worse. She enlightens the audience by letting us know how the term “wife beater came about. She also tells us how women did not have the right of marriage as they do today, instead they were arranged by parents, and if they did not comply they were subject to severe punishment. In Kincaid’s writing, she basically writes of a female being bossed. How society labels a good women. It basically is societies criteria of a good female and not a “slut”. It is written that “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not a slut that you are so bent on becoming”, this statement simply is a classification on how a female walks. If she walks a certain way she is considered a slut.
After reading both parties I fully agree with Virginia Woolf on
what source of knowledge is credible in determining how women were once treated in society compared to how they are treated today. A fictional article is someones idea, someones opinion; it is not a fact. Historians study the past and present and find ways to make connections and prove the evolution with time and how society has learned by its mistakes. Virginia Woolf. Virginia emphasizes that many fictional statements will often try to glorify women of the past, with my own input id like to add the term ‘bourgeois” which meant fancy or boujee. Wolf tells us the dark side of this fancy stuff, she tells us how women in the past were mainly arranged when it came to marriage. Lastly id like to add how Virginia Woolf elaborated the term “wife beater”, it was a glorified right of man. For example a man had the right to beat his wife until he saw fit because society deemed the female sex inferior to the opposite which is the male sex. As much as wrongdoing this is, it is safe to say that society has evolved in how we view women. Today women are respected just as men are, wife beating will incriminate you in modern society and in the majority of the world women have the right of marriage upon themselves.
