Virginia Woolf is officially my Feminist idol
I should be working on my Redrafting Journal for Short Story Writing or doing research for my next essay on Mrs Dalloway. Am I doing any of those? Nope. I’m too excited and I really need to tell you how Virginia Woolf has officially become my Feminist idol.
You might know I have not one, but many articles and uni essays on feminism and how some so-called feminists constantly confuse it with misandry (hating men) and how because of them I had a really hard time saying that I am a feminist myself. My very basic theory of feminism goes along the lines of men and women are different and that is great; we should accept and explore the differences and give everyone equal and especially equitable opportunities. I cannot be bothered with equal pay (just like my new ‘friend’ Woolf couldn’t care less about Votes for Women). I mean, I understand the concept and support it, but I will never actively fight for that. From personal experience, I feel that I’ve actually been privileged by my sex or, at least, certainly, I haven’t been disadvantaged by it. I know that is not generally true and so I am here to fight for equality and equity and, in the meantime, support all youth (let’s not forget I’m also a youth worker).
One thing I keep repeating in my feminist work is that there are numerous literary texts that present frustration towards men rather than support for other women. Take a look at a story that I love albeit not from a feminist point of view - ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. I found a free PDF for it:
Instead of focusing on the narrator’s mental health, we are told multiple times that her husband doesn’t understand her needs and even that he hates her. The poor man was doing the best he could. As a doctor, he thought that rest was the cure for depression. That’s how far medicine was at the time.
You may wonder what that has to do with my dear Virginia Woolf.
She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. (Woolf, p. 63)
Look at that little quote from A Room of One’s Own. (FREE PDF if you want to read the whole essay: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791.txt; 10/10 would recommend). It explains in just two short phrases what is the problem with the feminist movement in art/literature - instead of taking our time to rationalise anger, we simply lay it all on the page without considering the negative effects. If feminism was only Virginia Woolf or even Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë then there would be less ‘all men are pigs’ slogans. Woolf didn’t take her beliefs to the extreme and she didn’t write in anger. A Room of One’s Own takes you through her entire thought process, explaining why she believes that for one (woman or man) to be able to create art, one needs financial security and privacy. Her focus, of course, is on women and fiction, pointing out (and rightly doing so) that until recently women had no prospects of independence or privacy and therefore no way to produce art. She also gives a few examples, basically explaining that many of the ‘patriarchal’ or ‘misogynistic’ remarks from the past were simply a result of the contemporary social status of women. I won’t say more cause I don’t want to give you spoilers.
I cannot understand how Virginia Woolf is not a more popular feminist figure. Instead, we have Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar or Simone de Beauvoir. They’re valuable, but I feel like they wrote in a rage. Why did no one listen to Wool and write calmly?
A Room of One’s Own will be from now on one of my guides in writing and expressing my beliefs. I will be reading more of Virginia Woolf’s essays and stories. I have so much to learn from her. She is the kind of idol I need in my feminist work - daring, but calculated. She did not play it safe. She wrote about sexuality, mental health (even in men), art, and she wrote with honesty, without exaggerating.
To all my feminist, humanitarian, or equalitarian friends,
Read Virginia Woolf. For an early-twentieth-century woman - no - Despite being a person from the early twentieth century, she talks of things that hurt today like homophobia or misogyny & misandry. Her writing is easy to read - she’s ‘speaking’ when she writes, using simple words and insisting on each point until it’s clear. She’s calm and objective. That is exactly the type of discourse that our generation needs to take on.
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