A Room Of One's Own Analysis

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Recommended: Women in English literature

Courtney Park
Emery
Honors European Literature
2 April 2014 title Women have been oppressed and kept from reaching their full potential for centuries. Expectations for women have been set in society and breaking out from that mold is difficult for the public pressure demands women to conform to its ideals. Virginia Woolfe questions why women are expected to behave differently than men in her essay A Room of One’s Own and presents several reasons why society has set limited boundaries for women. Due to the lack of opportunities women have compared to those of men, women are often more ignorant. This does not occur naturally but rather because of the circumstances of their lives. Due to the lack of opportunities and ignorance, women are also far less wealthy economically and with experience in life. Virginia Woolfe analyzes the causes and effect of oppression on women in her essay A Room of One’s Own and modern novels also portray the damaging outcomes that occur from oppression.
Virginia Woolfe states money as one of the primary reasons that prevents women from having a room of their own and one that causes them to be conscious of society. Women are constantly depraved of independence and this impedes them from having financial stability. This is a factor that prevents them from having a room of their own to freely write and let the creativity flow. The narrator of the essay believes that “intellectual freedom depends upon material things” and that the ability to freely write “depends upon intellectual freedom”. She states that women have been unsuccessful in writing because of their lack of financial stability for centuries. Men are able to write without constant interruptions, but since women lack a space of their own to write...

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... in this field”. Ignorance of women caused by the aggression of men allowed only a handful of women in history to hold political power. Virginia Woolfe pointed out that women have been excluded from politics by a conspiracy of men from the upper, and even intermediate, ranks of society, and this was true for most fields of endeavor. Ignorance forced upon a group of people is also shown in the Hunger Games by the government in the novel. President Snow keeps many people of the districts unaware of the government’s actions to maintain absolute control over everyone’s lives. It causes people to become ignorant and causes them to live life without thinking. People forget to question and wonder at certain things happening and this relates to how women remained silent throughout history for they were largely ignorant of certain aspects of life due to the coercion of men.

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