A Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Two Bacterias' By Virginia Wolf

613 Words2 Pages

Food, a necessity in life is enjoyed by everyone. However, people are not treated the same when it comes to food. As stated in the article “Two cafeterias” written by Virginia Wolf. Comparison and contrast are the rhetorical devices that she uses. She tells of her dinner experience at a university visit. She attends a men’s cafeteria, and a women’s cafeteria, and notices a distinct difference between the two. In which she uses as a symbol of the way there is a discrepancy of the way women are treated in society.
She begins by pointing out how novelists never mention food. “it is part of the novelist’s convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings.” As if soup, salmon and ducklings are an expectation. Even though nobody talks about it, she takes the liberty to defy that convention. She describes the cooked fish that has been sunk into a …show more content…

The way they were served. The way the waiter refilled their wine classes, “wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled” The way they were relaxing after dinner. “no need to be anybody but oneself.” Everyone is happy to be who they are because there is no reason not to. They all get to experience the joy of a pleasant dinner. While the women do not receive the same joy. Instead the woman’s hall seems cold, and not in the sense of temperature but, in the sense of enthusiasm and eagerness. When the biscuits came she stated “these biscuits to the core “, dry and common, Nothing fancy about it. With the biscuits came the necessity of water. Which came in a big water jug that was passed around. Unlike the men, who had been served their drinks, in the hall close by. When dinner was done and all was consumed, “everybody scraped their chairs back” this statement portrays the vagueness and the lack of energy in this dining hall. They all got up, not a word to another person as they walked through the doors that swung

Open Document