Rhetorical Analysis Essay On Virginia Woolf

At one point in time, women and men had equal rights. However, those rights started to slowly slip away as time passed on by. In Virginia Woolf’s two passages, she holds a very strong position on the place that women have in society. She proves that sexism still exists by explaining this unjust treatment through her experiences at both genders’ colleges. In order to successfully convey her underlying negative attitude, Woolf uses intricate, detailed diction and imagery.
In the first passage, Woolf vividly describes her pleasant experience at the men’s college, but at the same time deliberately displays her outright anger. She uses words such as “defy” in “I shall take liberty to defy that convention” in order to portray her vexation of how

novelists have an incredible way of making people believe that every luncheon is always memorably spent. However, these novelists rarely discuss what is eaten. Therefore, Woolf says it is up to her to take her own time and right to go up against the convention. In this case, the word “defy” is used with a heavy, negative connotation in order to emphasize Woolf’s rebellious attitude towards how she feels about the novelists dismissing the meals that are served. To Woolf, the meals serve as vital evidence that will prove how unjustly women are treated. Furthermore, Woolf uses descriptive words such as “retinue” to describe her amazement with the men’s college meal. The word “retinue” means of high value and it implies the higher class of the meals served at the men’s college. On the other hand, Woolf conveys the low level of class in the women’s college by using a repeated contrasting word to retinue. Throughout the second passage, Woolf religiously reiterates the word “plain.” Her soup was plain, her plate was plain, her overall experience was plain. Woolf holds a very pessimistic mindset towards where women stand in society and continues to use negatively connotated words such a “muddy” to depict the low level of class. As a result, because Woolf’s choice of words, she truly captures how poor and downsized women are looked upon in society.
In addition, Woolf ties in imagery to further display her opinion on how women are treated.

Whenever Woolf discusses the men’s luxurious college meal, she take time to describe every single little detail. She emphasizes how superb these meals are through her strings of lengthy breathless sentences. Like her sentences, the meals are breathless and leave people mouthwatering and in awe. Woolf asserts, “the college cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream.” It wasn’t just any particular cream; it was the whitest cream. Not only are the men served with the best food, but the fact that they have a personal chef implies their high class. Moreover, Woolf even elaborately notes how candle lighting was used in place of regular light bulbs to display how her heavenly and classy she felt to attend the men’s college. However, in the blunt and abrupt descriptions of the women’s college, a dark cloud seems to put out all the light and happiness. Feeling very dissatisfied with the meals served, Woolf takes note of how the people respond to such deficient treatment. She recounts, “Everybody scraped their chairs back; the swing-doors swung violently to and fro.” This observation confirms how truly unenjoyable her experience was and how it felt like eating was a forced necessity. She does not speak highly of the meal at the women’s college at all, whereas with the men’s college, she speaks so highly of the meal that she feels as if she has been sent to

heaven.
Ultimately, Woolf successfully portrays how poorly women are look at in society from her tones which go from being indulgent and euphoric tone to the monotonous and dissatisfied in her transition from the men’s college to the women’s college. Tone may have partially been used to emphasize Woolf’s position, but it is her diction and imagery that genuinely show how men have a much better place in society than women do. The meal at the men’s college and the men’s exposure confirms that men are in a higher place in society than women are. By portraying the men’s college meal as a luxurious treatment and the women’s college meal as one that is forced, Woolf succeeds in crystallizing her attitude for readers.