Category Archives: Virginia Woolf

Anguish

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  • noun
  • severe mental or physical pain or suffering.
  • https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+guffawed&rlz=1C1EODA_enUS584US584&oq=definition+of+guffawed&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.5584j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=definition+of+anguish
  • No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational — for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons — but were none the less inevitable.
  • The narrator tells us how the girl pulls through

Perennial

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-adjective

– Living for several years or many years

-existing or cotinuing in the same way for a long time

– http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perennial

– ” For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literlature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet.”

– Virginia Woolf uses the word perennial as it relates to women and how they were treated back then.

Despatched

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“Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had despatched her. Though I flatter myself that I killed her in the end, the struggle was severe;”

http://i.word.com/idictionary/dispatch

Despatched (verb)

To kill with quick efficiency

 

 

that phantom in the room which was the angel had to go. It was very difficult for her to kill this phantom, because it wasn’t in the flesh, but yet in the mind. When she thought that she had killed this phantom with the quickness, and accuracy she turned out to be wrong.

 

Disproving

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“On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted. Her mind must have been strained and her vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that”(246)

 

http://i.word.com/idictionary/disprove

disprove (Verb)

 

To prove to be false or wrong

Instead of being praised and adored she was abused. This woman was looked down upon and thought to be the lesser. No woman not even an artist or writer could prove a man wrong without being lowered. It was almost the culture in those times for a woman that has been seeking independence to be slapped, or lectured in the name of men’s superiority.

Midterm prep

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“Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty–her blushes, her great grace. In those days–the last of Queen Victoria–every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: “My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.”

1. Professions for Women

2. Virginia Wolf

3. In this passage the beauty and pure ness of the angel is being explained. The angel to me is a metaphor for what women writers are expected to portray , if not outwardly at least consciously. The writer Is being manipulated by that “angel” in the room to deceive others through  her writing. If the writer listens to the angel she will not give readers the impression of her real writing style , but they will be exposed to an accepted but fabricated version of the writers work. It is definitely a contradiction for the angel to ask her to be all the things she is not, but to still be pure.

4.This passage connects to larger issues in the text because, to me it brings my attention to the fact that in any profession for women, especially writing, females have a set standard for which they are expected to look, live and behave by. This set standard really puts strain on women to alter their work, and or looks. The symbolism of the angel in the room represents the ideal woman who lives up to everyone else’s expectations. In life today it is even so. The advantage of having your own mins is conflicted by the opinions if others. This passage sheds a little light on the controversies involved with professions for women.

 

Feminist Manifesto

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Justification

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Wolf
I was inspired to think about how a feminist in society would respond to the male dominance presented in Room of One’s Own by Virginia Wolf. Chapter three helped me to understand why women are continuously fighting for equality. Stemming from history women are being held to the highest of standards yet treated as the lesser. In the early nineteenth century women were frowned upon for expressing herself through art. The production of women’s art cannot be controlled.
Women are slowly progressing in the area of social independence and gaining respect for their artistic abilities in the twenty first century. In the early nineteenth century women were not respected for their art. “It is fairly evident that even in the nineteenth century a woman was nit encouraged to be an artist” (246) ,says Virginia Wolf . This statement provokes me to wonder how long were women oppressed.
Mrs. Wolf argues about that rooted desire to defeat inferiority. That drive for women to be respected with unbiased opinions and without predetermined roles in life is relevant today. We have the gender gap for example. Women are still being paid less than men to perform identical job duties. In 2010 the median income for men was $42,800 compared to $34,700for women.(Wikipedia.org/male-female income) yet we are still expected to exist happily and cooperatively in a world with a double standard.

“On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted. Her mind must have been strained and her vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that”( 246.) . In my mind this unfolds as men and society enslaving mentally first by brainwashing them. How can one find time to create art, when she is busy submitting to taught standards? One is never to know about the creations which have been perfected in women’s art, thus she will be disrespected, and belittled.
” Even Lady Bessborough, I remembered, with all her passion for politics, must humbly bow herself and write to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower: ‘ . . . notwithstanding all my violence in politicks and talking so much on that subject, I perfectly agree with you that no woman has any business to meddle with that or any other serious business, farther than giving her opinion (if she is ask’d).’ And so she goes on to spend her enthusiasm where it meets with no obstacle whatsoever, upon that immensely important subject, Lord Granville’s maiden speech in the House of Commons.” (246.) It was common of women to accept the disaffirmation of the notion that her art is just as irrelevant as her voice in the early nineteenth century. It was their truth to be inferior and this seemed to be committed to their memory and provoking behavior influenced by fear. Even women whose influence was thought to be heeded to, such as Lady Bessborough would reluctantly defer being defeated by the control of men. Ms. Bessborough as an example was for all women of the nineteenth century to accept the superiority of men. This was to be accepted in all areas ranging from art to politics.
To be stripped of your vibrancies and disregarded in your opinion was punishment for rebelling against standards set for women. Though a contradiction to the progression of women in the early nineteenth century  a female would be shunned for the thought of expressing herself freely. Those rights will not be liberated for years to come.
Despite slow progress the evolution of women in power is on the rise. The pursuit for respect and equality is drawing more and more attention to itself. “The history of men’s opposition to woman’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of emancipation itself.” It is the favored perception is that men are the headliners. Truth is without women’s  quest for freedom of expression, equality, and recognition there would be no opposition, therefore no story. Women’s art is the story of emancipation.

 

Manifesto

 

This is the time! We women are claiming our position and our independence – in deciding how to express ourselves
We deserve Respect
Respect In art , and not only respect as an artist who is analyzing her world with a gifted and unique vision , But as a business woman, an inventor or politician if she chooses to be

You have that correct, it is a Choice for a woman to choose her path In life and not be denied the right to explore her options and in doing so realizing what is best for her

Women will not be weakened and left powerless without even the liberty of self-expression
We should never be limited to a set and widely accepted standard of living due to the fear of man
Why would you , Man , think that it was acceptable for we, women to function and cooperate with ultimatums that decrease our worth

We are worth high power decisions, Worth more than the eye can meet
Equality is the only satisfaction that is acceptable to women
We shall not be dominated by masculinity, and live in a mental cave, where we are minute
Men are embracing the idea and showing regard that we – Us – women, are the backbone that hold the family together and well prepared to be an artist
Women’s declaration will be embraced by men , women and children, old, and young  for all to gain their own understanding without biased restraint.

 

References :

1. A Room of One’s Own by. Virginia Wolf

2. Wikipedia .org/male-female _income

3.merriamwebster.com

 

Proffessions for Woman

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The writer in this reading was stating her opinion of woman professionals in our society. The writer explains that just because woman have more opportunity’s  in the work force, than in the past it doesn’t necessary mean that woman are actually equal to men. In her particular situation she is a writer who faces the issues of sexism in her line of work. She refers to an angel who she kills, which is the angel within herself, the angel is the conscious voice in her mind that try’s to prevent her from writing things that would not come from the idealistic  woman society tells her she should be, the angel is a warm woman who is sheltered in her home a woman with no voice or strong opinion, she had to kill the thought of this “angel of a woman” so that she can write freely without concern or shame. Woman are not allowed to think or say certain things, there’s  an invisible code of moral that has been placed upon woman since the beginning of time , being a writer is one of the best ways one can express themselves freely , the writer felt as if she could not do her job as well because of her inner woman, this angel of a woman kept getting in the way, she then had to kill her; remove the angel  out of her thoughts,  she then dosent have to feel as if her writing has  boundaries because she is a woman.

A Room of One’s Own “Gender inequalities”

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“It was disappointing not to have brought back in the evening some important statement, some authentic fact. Women are poorer than men because — this or that. Perhaps now it would be better to give up seeking for the truth, and receiving on one’s head an avalanche of opinion hot as lava, discoloured as dish-water. It would be better to draw the curtains; to shut out distractions; to light the lamp; to narrow the enquiry and to ask the historian, who records not opinions but facts, to describe under what conditions women lived, not throughout the ages, but in England, say, in the time of Elizabeth.
For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet. What were the conditions in which women lived? I asked myself; for fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.
I went, therefore, to the shelf where the histories stand and took down one of the latest, Professor Trevelyan’s History of England. Once more I looked up Women, found ‘position of’ and turned to the pages indicated. ‘Wife-beating’, I read, ‘was a recognized right of man, and was practised without shame by high as well as low. . . . Similarly,’ the historian goes on, ‘the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents’ choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted on public opinion. Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice, particularly in the “chivalrous” upper classes. . . . Betrothal often took place while one or both of the parties was in the cradle, and marriage when they were scarcely out of the nurses’ charge.’ That was about 1470, soon after Chaucer’s time. The next reference to the position of women is some two hundred years later, in the time of the Stuarts. ‘It was still the exception for women of the upper and middle class to choose their own husbands, and when the husband had been assigned, he was lord and master, so far at least as law and custom could make him.” (beginning of chapter three)

i think the main idea in chapter three would bring gender inequalities. The narrator brings up issues about inequalities between women and men being compared. The difference of statues and poverty, which affected mainly to women’s right of freedom. Woolf investigates women in the time of Elizabeth because she was frustrated that there were no women writers and that every man who were writers consider themselves amazing and great. Woolf is surprised that women had a few rights around the time of Elizabeth. And the difference between women’s lives as showed in the history books, that women were beaten up by their husbands. But does not find any thing about middle class women. The point of the passage is the inequality about men and women and the fact of how powerless women were if they got marry to the men, the men would become the lord or the master.