Woolf on Women - A Collection of Essays

Virginia Woolf

Description

"Woolf on Women" is a collection of Virginia Woolf’s essays about women (fictional, historical and those Woolf knew personally) and about how women should live. This compilation features essays that were published between 1924 and 1941 (the year of Woolf’s death) and includes work that was published posthumously. This book allows readers to catch a glimpse into Woolf’s mind, particularly her political, social and socio-economic opinions. It contains famous works such as ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1928), focusing on women’s lack of freedom both in the law and in their creative expression, ‘Professions for Women’ (1931), discussing the role of a housewife, and ‘Three Guineas’ (1938), the sequel to ‘A Room of One’s Own’, which explores anti-war themes. An essential read for fans of Woolf and those who want to take a deeper dive into her thoughts, this book is also the perfect gift for lovers of feminist literature.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English writer and feminist pioneer. She was integral to the widespread use of the narrator style stream of consciousness as a literary technique. Some of her most notable work includes the novels 'Mrs Dalloway' (1925) and 'To the Lighthouse' (1927).
Read & Co. Great Essays is proudly republishing these essays in a brand-new collection for the enjoyment of collectors of Woolf’s books and those who are new to her work.

Sujets

• Feminist Theory
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Feminism

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 03 février 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528792875
• Langue: English

Extrait

WOOLF ON WOMEN
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS
By
VIRGINIA WOOLF





Copyright © 2021 Read & Co. Great Essays
This edition is published by Read & Co. Great Essays, an imprint of Read & Co.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
Vi rginia Woolf
INTRODUCTION
WOME N IN WRITING
THE ENC HANTED ORGAN
LAETITI A PILKINGTON
JANE AUSTEN
HARR IETTE WILSON
GEORGE ELIOT
LADY DO ROTHY NEVILL
TWO WOMEN
A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN
"I AM CHRISTI NA ROSSETTI"
PROFESSIO NS FOR WOMEN
MARY WO LLSTONECRAFT
DOROTH Y WORDSWORTH
T HREE GUINEAS
SA RA COLERIDGE
ELLEN TERRY
MADAM E DE SÉVIGNÉ




Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in Kensington, London, England in 1882. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a respected man of letters, and as a young girl Woolf was introduced to many literary figures, including Henry James. Woolf also made great use of the family home's vast library, working her way through much of the English literary canon as a teenager. Her summers were spent in St. Ives, Cornwall, which would later form the setting for her famous novel, To the Lighthouse.
In 1895, when Woolf was just thirteen, her mother died, triggering the first of her many mental breakdowns. Despite this, between 1897 and 1901 she was able to take courses in Greek, Latin, German and history at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London. She even began publishing work with the Times Literary Supplement. However, in 1904, following the death of her father, Woolf suffered another breakdown which saw her briefly instit utionalised.
Following her discharge, Woolf and her sisters moved from their family home to a new abode in Bloomsbury. It was here that Woolf met Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and various other writers and intellectuals, who together would form the famous Bloomsbury Set. In 1912, Woolf married author Leonard Woolf, who nursed her through another breakdown and suicide attempt. Woolf published her first novel, The Voyage Out , in 1915. This, as well as various essays, quickly established her as a major public i ntellectual.
During the twenties, Woolf published the novels that established her as a leading figure of modernism and one of the greatest British novelists of the 20th century: Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). Stylistically, Woolf experimented with a lyrical stream-of-consciousness narrative mode, and is now considered – along with fellow modernist James Joyce – one of the finest innovators in the English language. Her work has been translated into fifty languages, and her major novels have never been o ut of print.
After completing her last novel, Between the Acts , Woolf fell into a period of deep depression – exacerbated by the the onset of World War ii and the destruction of her home during the Blitz. In 1941, fearing a total mental collapse, Woolf committed suicide. She was 5 9 years old.


INTRODUCTION
WOMEN IN WRITING
Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an influential English novelist, critic, and essay writer. Some of her best-known works are the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), alongside the essay 'Three Guineas' (1938). With much of her work exploring her feminist views, she often comments on the inequality between men and women regarding their legal and economic power while passionately discussing women's future in society and education. Woolf's work was central to the second wave of feminism in the 1970s and continues to inspire feminist ideas today. In the essays included in this collection, Woolf discusses women writers and women in society and fiction. She shares her political and societal views and her appreciation for the great women with whom we now regard her.
In 1869, Virginia Woolf gave a lecture to the undergraduate women at Girton College, Cambridge, and later, in 1871, she also addressed Cambridge's undergraduate women in the Arts Society at Newnham College. These lectures eventually became the famous essay 'A Room of One's Own' (1929). The essay is later described as Woolf's feminist manifesto; she lays out her raw and unashamedly honest opinions on the problems of being a woman writer. It summarises many of the conclusions she draws in her other writings on women. One of her key points is that excellent fiction is not the result of high intelligence or a particularly great mind but instead the result of the writer's material circumstances. In the 19th century especially, being born a man was an advantage because they were allowed to be educated, whereas women could barely read, spell, or even speak for themselves. This, Woolf concludes, is the reason for the severe lack of women writers. She explains that women need freedom and independence to write and that, in her opinion, this equates to a room of one's own (and £500 a year, which is equal to around £19,000 in today's money). It was not until 1948, decades after Woolf presented these lectures, that women studying at Cambridge were finally allowed to be awar ded degrees.
In many of this collection's essays, Woolf refers to women writers she greatly admired and respected. But she believed that despite the success of their work, they still did not have proper or complete freedom because they used male pseudonyms to publish their work and, therefore, lost their identity. One such writer is George Eliot (1819–1880). Eliot, or Mary Ann Evans, was an English novelist, poet, and journalist who wrote behind a male name to try and escape the stereotype that women can only write inconsequential romance novels. She also wanted to keep her private life away from scrutiny and the public's prying eyes due to her adulterous affair with English philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes. Eliot's well-known novel, Middlemarch, explores themes of women and ambition. It reflects Eliot's own beliefs that 'women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life – some joy in things for their own sake.' Woolf stated while commenting on Middlemarch that it was 'one of the few English novels written for grown -up people'.
While many women writers were surviving in the shadows, a few broke through to celebrity status. Despite being dependent on their constructed male identities, these women writers explored some key feminist themes throughout their work. A fine example of this is the Brontë sisters. Also using male pseudonyms, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë were English poets and novelists, frequently writing under Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The eldest sister, Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855), was best known for her second novel , Jane Eyre (1847). The novel's first-person account from the perspective of an ordinary governess was ground-breaking. It gave a long-overdue voice to all women who lived a 'curious silent unrepresented life' as Woolf writes in The Voyage Out (1915). R.B. Martin labelled Jane Eyre the first major feminist novel, and its explorations of the patriarchy's entrapment of women in domestication are still referred to in modern literature. Similar feminist themes appear in the works of the two younger sisters, Emily and Anne, as they explore a woman's place in the world and defy preconstructed societal norms of the time. The Brontës were a great source of inspiration for Virginia Woolf, and in 1925, she stated that ' Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte… She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book.' The sisters' works are among the first examples of feminist literature, depicting strong, wilful women and making space for otherwise disregarded narratives in a male-domi nated world.
Continuing with the theme of early feminist writings, it would be a mistake not to include English author Jane Austen (1775–1817). She is known for her biting social commentary; Austen uses irony and comedy in her classical Victorian romance novels. She wrote satirical stories that did not conform to Romantic stereotypes or the themes of sentimentality found in many books. Similarly to Woolf, her work critiques the socio-economic standing of women during her lifetime. It highlights the unfairness of women's dependence on marriage – a subject of which Woolf was passionate. In the essay 'Jane Austen', Woolf describes her as 'the most perfect artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal'. Woolf was aware of the disruption that Jane Austen bought to the male literature scene, despite her death aged 42, with her final years of developed writing left only as fragments of the imagination.
Another work by a 19th-century female writer Woolf draws upon is that of Pre-Raphaelite poet Christina Rossetti. Part of the Pre-Raphaelite literary movement and influenced by Romanticism, Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) was an English poet and a strong inspiration for Woolf. Rossetti's work is often viewed as a response to a repressed soul bound by religion and a strict sense of duty to God – her relationship with God restricted her life and limited the pleasures she allowed herself to experience. Woolf describes her poetry as being 'full of gold dust' but comments on the 'dark', 'harsh' God who resided in 'the centre of Christina Rossetti's being'. She