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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
What a masterpiece. It is one of the best books I’ve ever read. If I could kneel before the magnificent writing and intelligence of Virginia Woolf.
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
As I read Virginia Woolf’s gorgeously written 1929 essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own’, which was re-written and developed from two talks she originally gave to women in arts society meetings in 1928, I was reminded of what the second wave of Women’s Lib in 1968 intended with their “Consciousness Raising” classes or meetings.
Many people are unable to formulate their inchoate ideas, feelings or sense of dissatisfaction into words; partially because each individual does not know others are having the same dissatisfaction with the same problems, and partially because individuals are afraid what they feel is unnatural and wrong, and partially because they may believe the issues are unsolvable. I think Virginia Woolf’s essay and my generation’s Consciousness Raising meetings were attempting to accomplish the same things:
-to describe out loud and plainly what most women were experiencing but were unable to articulate,
-following up the describing of the problem with collaborative brainstorming,
-and devising a coherent plan of internal change and self-realization.
Woolf’s essay was directed to an audience of educated middle- and upper-class women who aspired to be writers. In 1928, these groups of women were of the intellectual elite. However, similar to women today, they had a hard time overcoming internal and external obstacles which society had taught them and enforced upon them. Woolf in these lectures articulated precisely the internalizing of supposed gender inferiority women do to themselves, as well as to describe the outside forces actually brought on to prevent women from developing their intellect.
Woolf’s goal was to make her readers into intellectual and articulate writers. She was saying the reasons there were few female authors and poets in 1928 were:
-most women were forbidden an education and access to libraries and universities,
-no female mentors or examples of writing by other women existed until recently,
-no opportunities for practicing the art of writing,
-women were kept busy at menial tasks and raising children with no time to be alone and think,
-social disapproval of writers who are female,
-the social necessity of women having a chaperone at all times,
-no financial support or income while writing a book of fiction or essays,
-superficiality of women to each other and society,
-male domination and bullying,
-male definitions of women and female roles were promulgated and enforced widely in society, religion, poetry, fiction and non-fiction books, history, articles and journals, because only men were considered trustworthy to be scientifically observant and socially authoritative to know what a woman is. No woman could possibly know what being a Woman is.
-the wearing down of even the strongest convictions of those believing in women’s rights and freedoms from the drip-drip-drip weight of male aggression and 24/7 male social superiority and laws which stripped women of all legal protections .
Woolf was clearly a genius of philosophy and sociology and psychology, and not simply a literary genius. She should be on everybody’s Top Ten Must Read Before Death lists, even if you completely disagree with her opinions and conclusions, or hate her literary style. Reading her books challenges the mind of every reader. I like her. She was fearless. However, it cost her. That drip-drip-drip of constantly proving she had a brain and a right to think even though she was a woman finally dropped her in the end.
However, she no longer needs to be read today because everything she wrote about in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ has very little to do with today’s social mores and laws regarding women, much less women writers, in America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, etc. Right? Right? The problems about discrimination, education, financial equality, male aggression and bullying against women are all solved, right? We don’t need no feminist movement anymore....NOT. Really? Really?
Consciousness Raising is how my generation of women learned to see we were capable of reading and writing books, of learning math, of driving a car, of using a hammer, of not having to get married after all for financial support because we could organize for equal pay, or of saying no to a man even for a demand for sex - and best of all, Consciousness Raising explained WHY we thought we couldn’t do any of those things because women were still being portrayed in almost every TV show, book. poem, movie, home, school, song or musical, play, church, synagogue, temple and mosque as being inferior to men as defined by male definitions and male-dominated social mores and male judges and male lawyers and male professors and male doctors and male accountants and male bankers and male bosses - all of whose public definitions of 1970’s feminine incompetence were COMPLETELY unchanged since Virginia Woolf’s 1928 essay:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_raising
Ok, to those of you who think Feminism is a dirty word or is outmoded - I disagree. I was a young adult in the 1970’s and 1980’s. WOMEN DID NOT HAVE ANY ENFORCED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AT THAT POINT. Laws had to be explicitly passed giving women constitutional rights BECAUSE THE CONSTITUTION EXCLUDED WOMEN FROM HAVING THOSE RIGHTS. WHY DID THESE LAWS HAVE TO BE PASSED GIVING WOMEN EXPLICIT CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS IF THEY WERE ALREADY IN PLAY?
THIS INEQUALITY WAS NO GODDAMN FUCKING JOKE. IT WAS A HORRIBLE, CRUEL, EXPLOITIVE SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE LACK OF EQUALITY LAWS MADE WOMEN SLAVES TO MEN. WOMEN ONLY HAD WHATEVER PROTECTIONS OR FREEDOMS A MAN FRIEND, RELATIVE OR BOSS WAS WILLING TO PROVIDE. SOME STUPID IGNORANT WOMEN THINK BECAUSE THEY LIVED WITH FREEDOMS LIKE MEN DURING THESE EARLIER YEARS THAT FEMINISM WAS UNNECESSARY. HOWEVER, IF A MAN DIDN’T HELP YOU, YOU LUCKY FEMALES HAD NO GODDAMN RIGHTS JUST LIKE US FEMALES WHO WERE LESS LUCKY TO HAVE A POWERFUL CONNECTED LOVING OR RICH MAN AROUND WHO WAS WILLING TO BEND DOWN TO ‘HELP A LITTLE WOMAN OUT’ BECAUSE HE FELT LIKE IT IN THE MOMENT.
I still have RAGE in my heart from that lack of justice, respect and safety from predation. I still have a sense of being robbed by the ‘glass ceiling’ which was in effect at that time. I still am paying for the late start and lack of resources I experienced until I was middle-aged. I am not the only one with residual RAGE in my heart, even today, and I am well aware, unlike many younger citizens, how easily a more conservative Congress can take away away all of the rights they gave American women in the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s. I am not even an ancient person, gentle reader. I am in my 60’s. But I have a good memory.
Many men and women think either Feminism was never necessary -
IT WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY -
or they think feminism was an excuse to whine and make excuses -
NO IT WAS NOT EXCUSES AND WHINING, THE INEQUALITY, ABUSE AND DISCRIMINATION PROBLEMS WERE FUCKING REAL -
or feminism is no longer necessary today -
SO NICE TO HAVE YOUR LIFE LIVING IN THE ERA OF 21ST-CENTURY PRIVILEGE AND NOT STILL DEALING WITH THE LEGACY OF PRIOR DECADES OF OPPRESSION - OR HAVING THE EXPERIENCE OF HAVING RIGHTS ERASED BY ROGUE CONSERVATISM AND CORRUPTION.
As for those of you who felt some feminists were or are terribly doctrinaire and man-hating without justification - well, sure. It happened. How did having the tables turned on you feel? Unfair? Unjust? : )
Such a shame. Right?
Many people are unable to formulate their inchoate ideas, feelings or sense of dissatisfaction into words; partially because each individual does not know others are having the same dissatisfaction with the same problems, and partially because individuals are afraid what they feel is unnatural and wrong, and partially because they may believe the issues are unsolvable. I think Virginia Woolf’s essay and my generation’s Consciousness Raising meetings were attempting to accomplish the same things:
-to describe out loud and plainly what most women were experiencing but were unable to articulate,
-following up the describing of the problem with collaborative brainstorming,
-and devising a coherent plan of internal change and self-realization.
Woolf’s essay was directed to an audience of educated middle- and upper-class women who aspired to be writers. In 1928, these groups of women were of the intellectual elite. However, similar to women today, they had a hard time overcoming internal and external obstacles which society had taught them and enforced upon them. Woolf in these lectures articulated precisely the internalizing of supposed gender inferiority women do to themselves, as well as to describe the outside forces actually brought on to prevent women from developing their intellect.
Woolf’s goal was to make her readers into intellectual and articulate writers. She was saying the reasons there were few female authors and poets in 1928 were:
-most women were forbidden an education and access to libraries and universities,
-no female mentors or examples of writing by other women existed until recently,
-no opportunities for practicing the art of writing,
-women were kept busy at menial tasks and raising children with no time to be alone and think,
-social disapproval of writers who are female,
-the social necessity of women having a chaperone at all times,
-no financial support or income while writing a book of fiction or essays,
-superficiality of women to each other and society,
-male domination and bullying,
-male definitions of women and female roles were promulgated and enforced widely in society, religion, poetry, fiction and non-fiction books, history, articles and journals, because only men were considered trustworthy to be scientifically observant and socially authoritative to know what a woman is. No woman could possibly know what being a Woman is.
-the wearing down of even the strongest convictions of those believing in women’s rights and freedoms from the drip-drip-drip weight of male aggression and 24/7 male social superiority and laws which stripped women of all legal protections .
Woolf was clearly a genius of philosophy and sociology and psychology, and not simply a literary genius. She should be on everybody’s Top Ten Must Read Before Death lists, even if you completely disagree with her opinions and conclusions, or hate her literary style. Reading her books challenges the mind of every reader. I like her. She was fearless. However, it cost her. That drip-drip-drip of constantly proving she had a brain and a right to think even though she was a woman finally dropped her in the end.
However, she no longer needs to be read today because everything she wrote about in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ has very little to do with today’s social mores and laws regarding women, much less women writers, in America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, etc. Right? Right? The problems about discrimination, education, financial equality, male aggression and bullying against women are all solved, right? We don’t need no feminist movement anymore....NOT. Really? Really?
Consciousness Raising is how my generation of women learned to see we were capable of reading and writing books, of learning math, of driving a car, of using a hammer, of not having to get married after all for financial support because we could organize for equal pay, or of saying no to a man even for a demand for sex - and best of all, Consciousness Raising explained WHY we thought we couldn’t do any of those things because women were still being portrayed in almost every TV show, book. poem, movie, home, school, song or musical, play, church, synagogue, temple and mosque as being inferior to men as defined by male definitions and male-dominated social mores and male judges and male lawyers and male professors and male doctors and male accountants and male bankers and male bosses - all of whose public definitions of 1970’s feminine incompetence were COMPLETELY unchanged since Virginia Woolf’s 1928 essay:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_raising
Ok, to those of you who think Feminism is a dirty word or is outmoded - I disagree. I was a young adult in the 1970’s and 1980’s. WOMEN DID NOT HAVE ANY ENFORCED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AT THAT POINT. Laws had to be explicitly passed giving women constitutional rights BECAUSE THE CONSTITUTION EXCLUDED WOMEN FROM HAVING THOSE RIGHTS. WHY DID THESE LAWS HAVE TO BE PASSED GIVING WOMEN EXPLICIT CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS IF THEY WERE ALREADY IN PLAY?
THIS INEQUALITY WAS NO GODDAMN FUCKING JOKE. IT WAS A HORRIBLE, CRUEL, EXPLOITIVE SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE LACK OF EQUALITY LAWS MADE WOMEN SLAVES TO MEN. WOMEN ONLY HAD WHATEVER PROTECTIONS OR FREEDOMS A MAN FRIEND, RELATIVE OR BOSS WAS WILLING TO PROVIDE. SOME STUPID IGNORANT WOMEN THINK BECAUSE THEY LIVED WITH FREEDOMS LIKE MEN DURING THESE EARLIER YEARS THAT FEMINISM WAS UNNECESSARY. HOWEVER, IF A MAN DIDN’T HELP YOU, YOU LUCKY FEMALES HAD NO GODDAMN RIGHTS JUST LIKE US FEMALES WHO WERE LESS LUCKY TO HAVE A POWERFUL CONNECTED LOVING OR RICH MAN AROUND WHO WAS WILLING TO BEND DOWN TO ‘HELP A LITTLE WOMAN OUT’ BECAUSE HE FELT LIKE IT IN THE MOMENT.
I still have RAGE in my heart from that lack of justice, respect and safety from predation. I still have a sense of being robbed by the ‘glass ceiling’ which was in effect at that time. I still am paying for the late start and lack of resources I experienced until I was middle-aged. I am not the only one with residual RAGE in my heart, even today, and I am well aware, unlike many younger citizens, how easily a more conservative Congress can take away away all of the rights they gave American women in the 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s. I am not even an ancient person, gentle reader. I am in my 60’s. But I have a good memory.
Many men and women think either Feminism was never necessary -
IT WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY -
or they think feminism was an excuse to whine and make excuses -
NO IT WAS NOT EXCUSES AND WHINING, THE INEQUALITY, ABUSE AND DISCRIMINATION PROBLEMS WERE FUCKING REAL -
or feminism is no longer necessary today -
SO NICE TO HAVE YOUR LIFE LIVING IN THE ERA OF 21ST-CENTURY PRIVILEGE AND NOT STILL DEALING WITH THE LEGACY OF PRIOR DECADES OF OPPRESSION - OR HAVING THE EXPERIENCE OF HAVING RIGHTS ERASED BY ROGUE CONSERVATISM AND CORRUPTION.
As for those of you who felt some feminists were or are terribly doctrinaire and man-hating without justification - well, sure. It happened. How did having the tables turned on you feel? Unfair? Unjust? : )
Such a shame. Right?
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
mysterious
slow-paced
Familiar with Virginia Woolf only from reputation, I picked up a copy of this book at an antique store. It sat on my nightstand for over a year before I opened the very short essay. Written almost 100 years ago, I related so well to her words, it's one of the few books I know I'll read again, and again. I've actually underlined sections - something I never do! Great for female writers and those who love them.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced