Virginia Woolf Misogyny

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The Final Report: Virginia Woolf; A Room of One’s Own, Chapter 2 In Virginia Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own, the author describes the societal oppressions that have prevented women from writing credible fiction throughout history. The essay references the specific setting of England, where male citizens claim to rejoice in excessive equality and liberation, and the female citizens suffer from unbearable injustices such as poverty. To allow her audience to gain competency of the influences of misogyny in modernist literature, Woolf makes it necessary for her audience to study the minority herself; as she analyzes the inferior vulnerability that has been inflicted on her sex since the cultural development of gender. A Room of One’s Own …show more content…

As the protagonist analyzes the publication, she begins to sketch a picture of the author of the book, and proceeds to portray him as excessively angry (Woolf 37). The professor’s emotion of anger leads the protagonist to identifying the primary cause of misogyny, as she compares women to distorted mirrors that “reflect the figure of man at twice its natural size” (Woolf 43). In a critical analysis of the essay, Arthur Scherr relates the scene in the British Museum to Woolf’s personal argument that men attempt to keep women under intellectual, financial, and social control, in a continuous cycle of oppression to remain superior in society (441). In addition to identifying the root of patriarchy in England, Woolf addresses the consequences of male-dominated societies. The representation of the tyrannical majorities addresses the absurdity that men hold the majority of power, yet they still express anger. This suggests that in addition to women experiencing limitations in nearly every domain of their public and private lives, a patriarchal state results in oppressive consequences for men, such as a false sense of superiority and an irate passion for deeming women as …show more content…

In the last paragraph of chapter two, the protagonist makes predictions about the future state of the western world, when women “cease to be the protected sex” (Woolf 48). Over half of a century has passed since Woolf’s initial publication of her essay and women are still subjected to unequal pay, brutal forms of violence, and other injustices influenced by misogyny. Optimistically, dedicated feminists continue to passionately work towards equality, and influential literature such as A Room of One’s Own serves as a motivation for women to create a safe and equitable world for the female

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