1. Introduction
The purpose of my essay is to highlight Virginia Woolf’s role in the feminist movement and her view of feminism at that time. In addition, I will discuss the main topics of her writings and I will explain how she reflected her feminist ideas in her work, especially in her essays A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas, as well as her influence in the feminist movement over the years to the present day.
2. Who was Virginia Woolf?
Virginia Woolf was a brilliant British writer of 20th century. She was born in London in 1882. Woolf was brought up in a very cultural atmosphere: her father, Leslie Stephen, was an editor and also a journalist and a writer. Since women couldn’t study at school nor go to the university, Woolf spent hours studying and reading books in her father’s library.
In 1905, she began to write in The Times Literary Supplement and she published her first book, The Voyage Out, eight years later. Mr Dalloway and To the Lighthouse are two of the most famous novels written by Woolf. In addition, she wrote several essays such as A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. She also was part of a group of intellectuals and writers called the Bloomsbury group.
Woolf’s work was frequently interrupted by periods of mental illness. She suffered from depression, madness and psychological stress because of the war. Eventually, she committed suicide and she was found drawn in the River Ouse in 1941.
In terms of feminism, she contributed to the fight for women rights and her writings have had a big impact in later generations.
3. Feminism and Woolf
Feminism is a movement whose main objective is to achieve equality between men and women, as well as to make women aware of their rights (Dr. Isam M. Shihada, 2005). In the 19th century, women were considered much more weak than men and there was great inequality between men and women in moral, social, economic and political fields. In addition, most of the women did not have access to education. The only exceptions were the women of the upper class who had a tutor at home. Moreover, women did not have a job at that time, so they were financially dependent on men because they worked and they owned the money. Consequently, the role of women in society was to get married and to have children.
Literature has been a useful tool to spread feminist ideas and concepts. Many women who have written about feminist issues have become important figures in the area of feminism nowadays. Virginia Woolf is one of these female writers. She revolutionized the concept of the novel. She was looking for a new completely new form and she did not want to depend on editors or publisher’s advices, but on her own.
In addition, Woolf has been considered one the pioneers of the 20th century feminism. However, her reactions to some feminist ideas of her time were sometimes conflicting and contradictory.
Woolf reflects her concern about political, social and feminist issues in her novels, essays and articles. She was completely against the British patriarchal culture and the authoritarian power of the father and husband. She disliked men’s domination. This domination was represented by her father, but especially by her stepbrothers George and Gerald because she was sexually abused by them.
One of the main interests of Virginia Woolf was to study the causes of the dominance of men and also women’s lack of self-confidence. She admired women and she highlighted the necessity of women’s friendship. According to her, women needed to remain together in order to fight against the patriarchy. It was necessary to forget about the model of woman that Victorian morality encouraged. Woolf defended the idea of getting rid of the concept of women as “the angel of the house”. Furthermore, they should create their own identity. According to Woolf, this was one of her responsibilities as women writer.
According to J. Marcus, Woolf is a “consistent socialist, pacifist and feminist” and she “presented ideas that survive unscathed and undated”. In her essays, she encouraged women to write about their experiences too. She also highlighted that there were few female writers and she claimed that their writings were full of anger and fear. She analysed this issue in A Room of One’s Own. In addition, she called herself a writer and she insisted in the importance of conceiving ‘writing’ as a profession, especially if they were female writers. Woolf defended also that the work that women made had to be fairly paid.
In addition, Virginia Woolf was a mentally unstable woman. According to McLaurin, there are several reasons that explain her breakdowns. As mentioned before, he was sexually abused by her stepbrothers and so was her stepsister Stella, who died in 1897. Stella’s death, as well as her mother’s, profoundly affected Woolf. She went through several depression periods and, of course, this instability deeply marked her life.
3. Feminism in A Room of One’s One and Three Guineas
Woolf published a lot of texts that reflected her feminist beliefs. A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas are the two Woolf’s essays that are more focused on women and feminism. Both deal with the exclusion of women from education and public life.
In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Woolf also discusses the problems of the woman writer and how women had been unfairly represented in literature over time. This essay is considered as the “first modern text of feminist criticism, the model in both theory and practically socialist feminist of a specifically socialist feminist criticism” (Marcus, 1988, p. 216). Woolf underlines the importance of financial Independence. She claims “a woman must have a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (Woolf, 1929, p. 4). Thus, she defends that all women should have money and a space of their own, so that they can be free and independent. They need money and privacy in order to write and develop their creativity.
One of the more outstanding aspects of this essay is the creation of a fictitious character: Judith Shakespeare. She is said to be as gifted as her brother, but she destroys or hides her work because she is scared. Through this character, Woolf is trying to reflect the position of the woman at that time. Judith Shakespeare could write and create, but she had not any means. She could not have an education and she had not any money, which means she could not take control of her own life. Eventually, she committed suicide, because the situation became unbearable for her. Consequently, according to Woolf, writer’s life depends on their materials circumstances. Besides, she highlights again the importance of the education.
Three Guineas was written nine years later, in 1938. In this essay, Woolf discusses the oppression in the political and cultural life of women. She also writes about the relationship between feminism and fascism. Therefore, she links the patriarchal lifestyle with the horror of the Nazism. This was very risky and impetuous. Thus Three Guineas caused a generalised rejection in the society at that time. Nobody wanted to accept this idea of “everyday fascism”.
In terms of women’s work, Woolf discusses in Three Guineas the value of the work that women do and the money they make. This issue also appears in A Room of One’s Own. According to Brigitte Bechtold (2000), although Three Guineas was written after this essay, Woolf deals with this subject in a more radical way. In terms of women work and value, Woolf’s ideas in A Room could be INTERPRETADO as a continuation of Three Guineas. This essay contains rational arguments and facts, so this makes it less attractive than A Room of One’s Own. In adittion, men considered that the tone that Woolf used in Three Guineas is hostile to them especially (Silver, 1991). In Three Guineas, the importance of education appears again, as well as the idea of getting rid of the concept of “woman” that existed in the society. In fact, there are three important topics that stand out in this essay: war, education and male patriarchy. She wanted to create a new woman without chains. She encouraged women to unite themselves and to create a ‘society of outsiders’.
She also writes about the importance of having their own money in order not to depend on the men (father, brother, husband, etc.). In fact, women were more encouraged to find a good husband than to find a good internship opportunity in terms of education.
3. Some contradictions
Woolf was a feminist. However, she expressed many times her dislike for this label. Her attitude towards feminism can be considered as revisionist. She wanted to take the women’s movement in new directions that were different from the ones that its founders drew. According to Alex Zwerdling (1986, p. 210), ‘no other element in Woolf ’s work has created so much confusion and disagreement among her serious readers as her relation to the women’s movement’.
Woolf worked for some feminist groups (the Suffrage Movement, World Women Organization, etc.). However, she often made some criticism about the suffragists. Moreover, she was very sceptical towards women vote. In fact, she writes in A Room of One’s Own that ‘of the two— the vote and the money— the money I own seemed infinitely the more important. This scepticism was based on her belief that “the substance of the old” would remain “in the form of the new” (Zwerdling, 1986). She claimed that the right to vote would not mean to achieve equality and freedom. Therefore, she considered that it was more important to try to open people’s eyes through her writing. This was a more pacific way of fighting, according to her. She claimed that women should not react to the PROVOCACIONES of men in a violent way. In fact, she recommended that they ignored men. Wool was completely against the war (VIRGINIA GUAY) She attended some feminist meetings, but after a few of them, she decided that it was a waste of time for her. She preferred to take part in the fight through her writings.
However, the suffragist movement had a great impact in Woolf’s life. She followed the debates and she wrote constantly feminist declarations (?).
Woolf had some radical ideas that often CHOCAR with her traditionalism and she could never get rid of this traditionalism entirely.
4. Conclusion
The contribution of Virginia Woolf to feminism cannot be compared with the work of Simone de Beauvoir or Betty Friedan. However, the work of Woolf is exceptional and very relevant in the literary feminist production. It stands out for the emotional impact and her particular vision of the intellectual capacity of women. She wrote fiction in order to demonstrate what might have happened in reality or might yet happen under appropriate conditions.
As she defends, women have had less intellectual and they have not had the same opportunities as men in the cultural landscape. This situation has been improving over the years, but there are still many things to do. Nowadays it is necessary to remember all those women that fought for their rights because thanks to them, it has been possible for women to achieve many goals as, for example, having access to education with the same conditions as men. Now they can study at the university and they can have the same employment as men. However, women still suffer from discrimination towards them not only in their jobs, but also in many aspects of their life. There are men whose salaries are higher than women’s salaries even when they both have the same job, and this is just an example.
Nowadays, Woolf’s writings are still quite important in feminist ideas. She had to fight for a place in the literary world and she made it. This is one of the reasons why Virginia Woolf is considered one of the most powerful women of the 20th century and also one of the outstanding writers of all time.