Analysis Of The Angel In The House By Virginia Woolf

Decent Essays
Virginia Woolf’s “Professions for Women” appears in her book The Virginia Woolf Reader. Mitchell A. Leaska provides context for this speech and describes it as “an abbreviated version of the speech [Woolf] delivered before a branch of the National Society for Women’s Service in 1931” (Woolf, 276). In her speech, Woolf aims to call attention to the difficulties women continue to experience in the workplace. Woolf uses personal anecdotes, parallelism, and anaphora as techniques to construct her Aristotelian modeled speech to collectively empower her audience to fight back from “The Angel in the House”.
Woolf begins her essay by utilizing parallelism in order to describe female authors in the past who are “making the path smooth,” and “regulating
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Woolf describes ‘The Angel in the House’ as a woman who “never had a mind or a wish of her own” and who “was pure” (Woolf, 278). Woolf explains that this Angel was common among every house that it was an integral part of each woman to mimic the traits of the Angel; Woolf uses The Angel in the House as metaphor to signify the pressure women face to “charm… conciliate… tell lies if they are to succeed” (Woolf, 279). This exactly, Woolf points out, is the barrier to equality between men and women. Woolf makes it clear to the audience that equality between the sexes will never exist as long as women refrain from freely and openly expressing their beliefs. This conclusion has allowed Woolf to reinforce her use of logos; because women must refrain from expressing how they feel, Woolf explains that it logically follows that equality will never exist with the Angel still being alive. Woolf refuses to become the Angel and therefore resorts to killing this Angel in order to rid the experience “that was bound to befall all women writers at that time” (Woolf, 279). Woolf’s argument however is logically fallacious in that it overstates the struggles that will affect “all women writers”. This is the part of her speech where her …show more content…
Her repetition of the word “you” reinforces her emphasis on encompassing all the women in her audience. Woolf emphasizes to her audience that they are in control of their future and must make these necessary changes for themselves. In order to gain equality between men and women, Woolf stresses that “[they] are able to decide for [themselves] what the answers should be” (Woolf, 282). By using anaphora to specifically reference all the women in her audience, she reinforces her use of parallelism earlier in her speech. Woolf is giving the women in her audience the responsibility of defying the Angel and utilizing what the professional women in the past worked hard to achieve. Woolf continues to educate the women in her audience that there are difficulties still present for women in the workplace. Woolf’s use of third person narration throughout the speech not only allows her to encompass all the women she is talking to at the National Society for Women’s Service, but it also allows her audience to relate to her and think about women’s difficulties from a personal perspective. Woolf uses her personal experiences as a female in a patriarchal society to connect with her audience. She establishes a common ground with her audience which allows her to end her speech by emphasizing the importance of fighting back against the predisposed notions of a woman. Her use of

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