Looking at Virginia Woolf: women and society

Abstract

This paper looks at two essays, A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938), of Virginia Woolf to study the position of English women living in the late nineteenth to first half of the twentieth century. These essays provide a clear glimpse into the socio-economic disparity of the men and women of her society. Both of these texts look at the contemporary debates around feminism. In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf discussed the conflicting and discriminating situation that women faced if they pursued a writing career. Woolf declared through her essay that a woman must possess her own money and property and only in this way will they get their freedom. In this work, Woolf raised her voice against male dominance as a feminist for the first time and tried to establish the feminist goal of changing the society and the world into a place where the male and the female voices will be equally valued. Through the essay, Three Guineas, Woolf tried to relate the issues of war with feminism because she wanted to express how far the lives of women were affected by the war. She also analyzed women's position in their society mostly at a time when the country was approaching war and discussed how far women could help the country in such critical times. She encouraged an idea of far-reaching and independent political action in which women will form a society as outsiders in order to challenge the rise of Fascism and the implication of war.