Feminism, Elitism, and A Room of One's Own

As the 1920s were brought to a close, much of the developed world had already undergone radical social changes regarding women’s rights.  Most of these movements were organized around political rights not given to women that had long been enjoyed by men, such as the right to vote, own property, and equal access to higher education.  Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, while influential at its time, has since become a staple of feminist literature.   While Woolf makes clear that she is opposed to society’s domestication and objectification of women, most of the argument in her essay concerns women’s rights in the political world.  This includes women’s suffrage, which was finally granted in full to women living in the United Kingdom in 1928, only a year before the book’s publication.  In a time when European nationalism was at its peak, it might not have been uncommon for writers like Woolf to directly address the aspects of society under government control, such as legal matters in owning property and voting.  After all, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the sovereign state we know today, was formed only two years prior to publication in 1927.  Yet the women’s rights movement was much greater than the attainment of political power, and Woolf knew that.  Many of the social inequalities seen between men and women were brought upon them by society itself, such as popular views of traditional gender roles, and what were considered men and women’s respective “realms.” 

It is appropriate and fitting that Woolf would base her essay around the metaphorical “room of one’s own,” which in itself suggests that men and women have long lived and worked in their own separate realms.  A woman’s role was largely seen as being subservient to men, and also to remain in the house and tend to the children.  In contrast, a man’s realm was defined by his trade, and on a more social level, by his wealth and his character.  In this respect women have long experienced a sort of either dehumanization or hyper-humanization- depending on how one perceives the situation- that is characterized by a woman’s fundamental ability to reproduce without any importance given to her personal morality or character.  As a writer Woolf had long fought against these traditional gender roles by creating detailed and complex female characters in her novels, but even such characters were often privileged in ways many women at the time were not.  Much like the women seen in Shakespeare, most of the female characters in Woolf’s novels are, like Virginia Woolf herself, of a high social standing and are usually from relatively wealthy or influential families. Characters such as Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Ramsay, and Jinny were not portrayals of typical women of the time, and throughout her work Woolf has imposed a sense of elitism that lingers over her greater desire for women’s rights.  Perhaps Woolf had forgotten that not all men went to college and lived luxurious, self-centered lives typical of the men she portrayed in her novels, and even within A Room of One’s Own, there is a lack of recognition of the great social injustices that plagued England during the time aside from those pertaining to solely to women.  If Woolf thought that by the twenty-first century all humans regardless of sex would have access to education and political influence, she would be sorely disappointed to see the world in which we live today.  Aside from the numerous gender-related discrepancies that remain to this day (which in all due respect have lessened since the 1920s thanks in part to the efforts of Woolf and her peers), there also remain inequalities pertaining to race and social class to which the elite have long turned a blind eye.  It would not help Woolf’s argument to state that even white men living in the wealthiest nation in the world often do not have access to higher education, but one can subdue such thoughts in recognition of the impact and accomplishment in women’s rights that have followed in the wake of her work.  Despite these accomplishments, Woolf ultimately fails to acknowledge the correlation between the elite and the oppressors, and the poor and the oppressed, and she is strangely silent when it comes to the needs of working class women who would not be able to attend a university regardless of what the law permits them to do so.  Perhaps Virginia Woolf did realize all of this, but she played to her strengths and knew that such a social movement would need to stem from those with influence.  Perhaps I am just overly invested in the troubles of the twenty-first century that it inhibits me from accurately representing the political landscape of the 1920s.  After all, Woolf never blamed the government, she blamed society, and that is something we should all remember.

Gender Roles Revisited: The Waves

It seems that one cannot make it through a Woolf novel without being confronted in some way by the gender issues of her time.  This is not to say that they are in any sense unwelcome of irrelevant to today’s reader, for instead of directly addressing the politics of her day, Woolf instead infuses her ideas into the lives of the characters themselves, making them in some sense living examples of these tensions at work.  But Woolf carefully avoids archetypes in her work, which works to her advantage: While Susan ultimately chooses to lead a domesticated, family-oriented life, we do not have any hyper-masculine character to which she can e compared, and even Susan herself contemplates her loss of individuality as she chooses what she sees as a stereotypical lifestyle for a woman.  Also to this effect Susan compares herself to the other women in the novel.  Jinny has a completely superficial, externally-oriented personality, and is closest to what could be considered a “man’s woman” because she is obsessed with physical beauty and plays up to men’s desires.  The other extreme is Rhoda, who, unlike the other two, is more of a recluse and very internal.  Her near constant depressive state questions her role in the world.  In many ways her concerns are more humanistic than sexual, and despite her attraction to Louis, she expresses little in terms of sexual desire.  Feeling lost and shut out of the world, she often looks to Susan and Jinny to know how a woman should even act, as they seem to her to be much more in touch with their womanness. 

Such a questioning of gender identity is seen again in the lives of the male characters.  Aside from Neville, none of the male narrators are overly concerned with sexual pursuit.  Louis and Rhoda’s relationship is more about their internal and personal development than it is about expressing their love for each other, which is one of the reasons their relationship ends.  What concerns most of the men is the intellectual aspect of life, as all of them have strong ambitions for intellectual achievement, yet once again only Neville is the exception in their collective success.  While one may argues that despite his failure to produce a novel Bernard achieves a rather fulfilling intellectual life, his love for words and his never-ending pursuit of new ways to express himself serves as a model for the other male protagonists.  Louis is constantly self-conscious of his perceived social status, and seeks to appear smarter and more refined than how the others see him.  Neville is also in constant intellectual pursuit, and is ultimately successful in becoming a writer.  It is slightly ironic that Woolf would create a group of male characters with such academic endeavors, as she often portrays women as having a suppressed intellectual superiority, such as Mrs. Ramsay and Clarissa Dalloway.  However, Rhoda is probably the most self-reflective character of the group, and possibly overly so, as it ultimately drives her to commit suicide.  There is something to be said for the way Rhoda constantly feels as if she must keep such thoughts and emotions internal, which might be Woolf commenting on the social norms which determine what kinds of thoughts men and women are allowed to express.  In a final ironic move, only Bernard is allowed to discuss her death, suggesting that Rhoda’s death does not lead to any definite resolution, instead leaving the reader to ponder its significance.

Critical Summary of Neel's "Photography of Antarctica"

In “The Photography of Antarctica: Virginia Woolf’s Letters of Discovery,” Alexandra Neel explores how photographic language offers the reader insight into the mind and through processes of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse.  Neel begins by showing Mr. Ramsay’s infatuation with the Antarctic voyage of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, a British explorer who died during an expedition to Antarctica.  As Mr. Ramsay relives the Captain’s voyage in his own thoughts, he begins to ponder the attainability of knowledge in a metaphorical journey to the end of the alphabet.  Neel argues that Mr. Ramsay’s determination to move from the letter Q, which signifies the level of thought he has already reached, to the letter R, a level beyond that which even his own mind has endured, shows that he believes knowledge is both linear and obtainable, and possibly finite.  This strain of thought transfers to Mr. Ramsay’s perception of imagery, which he also sees as limited and obtainable.  Symbolized by the flicker of a lizard’s eye, Woolf conveys Mr. Ramsay’s point of view through the language of still photography, but in accordance with Mr. Ramsay’s thoughts, these images are strangely concrete and specific, and portray scenes and actions on their most simplistic, fundamental level, and often consist of Mr. Ramsay simply stating what is happening before him.  In a dramatic conclusion to Mr. Ramsay’s venture into the life of Captain Scott, Neel writes that he experiences a sort of death just as the way Scott did, and instead of being the photographer of his subjects as he was previously in this segment, he instead becomes the photographed, making his failure to reach any conclusion to his internal conversation as obtainable (or unobtainable) as the letter R is to him.  Neel writes that this process of objectification is mitigated in the mind of Mrs. Ramsay, who does not depict imagery as a series of objective acts but instead as points in time of a continuous, ever-changing landscape.  In addition, this sense of photography can have a mind of its own, as Neel writes that in the “Time Passes” section, there are no human characters to relate the imagery to the reader, yet the photography simply happens upon itself, supporting the idea that photography is more closely related to the concept that has Mrs. Ramsay instead of that of Mr. Ramsay.

Critical Summary of Woolf's "Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid"

Virginia Woolf writes in “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid” of the newly begun Second World War, which by 1941 had begun to wreak havoc upon England in a series of German air raids.  Woolf writes that the foundation for such a war is freedom, whether it be for or against it in some way, but through her wonderfully lofty writing that zips between war, feminism, and politics as swiftly as the fighter pilots themselves, she touches on a much deeper subject that lies much close to heart.  That subject is the idea of imprisonment, that no matter who somebody is or what society determines them to be- whether it is English or German, man or woman- nobody is truly free, and by nature of society, freedom is limited and is largely a product of the societal machine.  This idea of the machine is a reoccurring theme throughout the essay.  Woolf makes numerous references to pilots who are trapped within a machine, which metaphorically represents the way society places ideas and opinions in one’s head which strongly affect the way they live their life.  Woolf’s call to action is directed at women, who she says are in many ways left out of the war.  The war is fought between men, and the policies are designed by men, which leads her to ask what exactly a woman can do make her voice heard in the midst of a great war.  The answer to this question is ideas, that a woman must let her ideas be known so that society can break away from the machine that has driven it to such extremes.  Rather than blaming men for the atrocities that are happening, she also sees them (in reference to the young men who fight in the military) as victims of the machine as well, despite Woolf’s previous efforts of criminalizing men for they way women are treated in society.  Perhaps it is war that sparks Woolf into taking a new approach to a situation she has long been a part of, but regardless of these circumstances, Woolf takes this opportunity to not only protest the violent actions spreading across Europe, but also the social pressures that caused it.

The Waves and Woolf's Multiple Levels of Conversation

As we finish The Waves, I am becoming more aware of Woolf’s sense of connectivity between the words and the reader.  We already saw Woolf throw out any sense of logic and reason in Orlando, which presents issues such as time and gender as very loosely defined yet thoroughly explored themes.  However the language of Orlando does not take as free of a form as that of The Waves, as within Orlando there are still concepts of the narrator and a relative order of events.  The Waves instead relies completely on its characters’ dialogue, which presents its own constrictions but at the same time frees Woolf to use even more vivid and imaginative language.  Because Woolf is not obligated to provide a narrator’s voice giving directional, spatial, and psychological information, she is able to present all of the plot and imagery through first-person language.  This allows her to simultaneously impose the speaking character’s personality on a scene while providing new visual information, which is then juggled around between the other characters in their conversation. 

Even more intriguing than the form of The Waves are the multiple levels of conversation that happen at once throughout the novel.  The idea of the inner conversation is one that Woolf takes to a new level in this novel.  Between Bernard’s pompous demeanor and Rhoda’s near constant depressive state, there are times when each of the characters feels like a part of one greater mind.  Perhaps each of the characters represents a faction of Woolf’s own ego, as it’s not difficult to see such connections between Bernard’s love of language or Neville’s passion for art.  Yet even such characteristics can be seen on a much deeper level.  Aside from numerous superficial similarities between Woolf and her characters (three of them have ambitions to be writers), other characters explore much deeper emotions.  These emotions tend to reveal themselves in multiple characters, but they are each usually resolved only in one.  For instance, Susan, Rhoda, and Louis all feel like they are excluded from their surroundings in some way:  Susan debates the advantages of living a simple country life away from the city, Rhoda suffers from a sense of complete alienation from the other characters, and Louis is self-conscious of his lower-class appearance and accent.  While ultimately neither Rhoda nor Louis get over their insecurities, Susan makes the conscious choice to live a domestic life on a farm, thus bringing closure to her sense of exclusion while she was in the city.  This pattern is seen again between Bernard, Louis, and Neville to a lesser degree.  All three of the men have ambitions to become writers in the future, but ultimately only Neville is successful in doing so.  This is because Neville is able to dedicate a part of his life to art that the others are not: Bernard is almost lost in his own world to the point that he inhibits his own success.  He is constantly infatuated with language and words, and while he is very talented, he is also heavily invested in the group and his relationships with the other characters.  He does not always make this aspect of his personality obvious, but the way he insists on telling everyone’s story at the end suggests that he is more concerned with the other characters than he may let on.  On the other hand, Louis is similarly invested in his personal relationships that he does not refine his art as Neville did, and instead Louis is constantly questioning his identity.  While each character is unique in their own ways, the similarities between them propel the unconscious conversation between their lives.