Women through of the human history have been discriminated. In fact, men have had the power of the society and they have established their own ideas and laws about how people have to live inside it. Taking a second place in any society, women have had to suffer a lot of humiliations since they are so-called as the weak sex. Fortunately, there were women that fought in order to assert themselves, showing their dissatisfaction with a feminist movement during 1920’s. Feminists worked hard to achieve their goals which were; equality for women, to suffrage as well as men, women’s rights and interests, etc. Women obtained their right to suffrage 1928 in England. But, one of the greatest feminist during this period who played an important role was Virginia Woolf.
Adelia Virgina Woolf was born on January 25th in 1882, London. She was an important woman during the “interwar period” (the period between the First World War and Second World War) because all her wrorks made her a famous English novelist and essayist. Woolf belonged to London literary society and was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. This was a group of friends where their works were influenced by Literature, criticism, feminism, pacifism and sexuality points of views. But, all good things that she made for women could not save her from her heavy mental illness, for that reason on March 28th, 1941; she committed suicide, leaving a letter to her husband explaining her reasons why she did it. Woolf wrote great texts such as; Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando 8 1928) and A room of One’s own (1929). It is precisely the last one that made her so important during the Feminism movement. In this text, Woolf brought out controversial issues, for example, all difficulties that a woman writer had if she wanted to introduce herself in the literary world which has been dominated by men. Inside of “A room of One’s own” appears her famous phrase which is “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”[1]. This sentence expresses the idea that a woman need to have a personal place where she can think and write as well as a man has his own room, and she also need to earn enough money in order to support her works.
In chapter three of “A room of One’s own”, Woolf talks about women writers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, saying that they had the same capacity than men in order to write wonderful songs and sonnets. But, most of women were not prepared to do it because they lacked education and economic support. Having had an education based on how they had to be good mothers, homemakers and wives, women could not develop their capacities of writing poetry, novels, stories, etc. That is why marriage started to be the best option that fathers found for their daughters in order to increase the money in the family, “Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice, particularly in the “chivalrous” upper classes.”[2] In fact, women did not have personality and character, they were submissive. For that reason, Woolf says that all books which were written by men show women that were not real, “Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; as great as a man, some think even greater”[3]. In effect, in the real life women were completely insignificant, they could not say what they wanted to say, women rights did not exist, they were slaves of their fathers and then of their husbands, and women were also slave of Catholic Church because most of they had to wear chastity belts, “-for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons- but were none the less inevitable… a religious importance in a woman’s life…”[4] However, there were some women that challenged this world managed by men, and they started to write using names of men, for example; Currer Bell whose real mane was Charlotte Bronte or Geroge Sand whose real name was Amandine-Aurore-Lucille Dupin. Both were great writers, but they had to hide their real sexuality in order to protect their integrity because they could be killed or tortured for the society which was dominated by men.
In conclusion, gender differences have provoked that women had to express their discontent writing about this. Virginia Woolf was and will be being one of the most important feminists because she wrote about women’s discrimination. Her text “A room of One’s own” is a manifestation of disapproving because it shows how women have to suffer that men not allow them to write, to think, to vote, and to live their lives how they want to. However, Woolf says clearly that every woman has the same capacity than a man has for writing and thinking, but men have not given women the chance to develop them. However, there were breve women who did not care men's thoughts and they started to write using false men's names.
[1] Woolf, Virginia. A room of One’s owm.
[2] Woolf, Virginia. A room of One’s own. Chapter 3.
[3] Woolf, Virginia. A room of One’s owm. Chapter 3.
[4] Woolf, Virginia. A room of One’s own. Chapter 3.
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Reference:
- Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own; Chapeter 3, pdf document
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf
- http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_res.biography.htm
