A Room Of One's Own Research Paper

Literature written by a female hand has been rare, but tremendously influential on society’s readers and writers alike. One of the effects of their writing has been a greater insight to being a female in a male dominated world. The fact it has been so sparse throughout history gives the first clue. It is very hard for a woman to voice an opinion, let alone be heard by those around her. Those few female authors that have been published have given the world a precious gift and a deeper understanding of their lifestyle. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own brings many themes and ideas to the table. One of these is an overall, universal practice of denying girls opportunities to learn and explore the world around them. This concept is supported by a passage on the library, “Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep forever. Never will I wake those echoes.” (Woolf, pg. 1316) Girls were told that they didn’t need to learn about anything other than obedience and politically correct behavior. Later, as girls blossomed into women, they were eschewed from conversations and adventures associated with politics, …show more content…
Many of these rules are unnecessarily demeaning and often contradictory. An example of this from Girl is, “don’t walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil.” (Kincaid, pg. 1725) From this the reader can assume two things. First, a female can’t do anything to harm her appearance if it will make her unattractive to a man. Second, she must do anything, no matter the physical consequence to herself, to make a man happy. The obvious message sent to the woman is that her sole purpose is to please men and that she as a person or anything else about her is worthless. Unfortunately, this implication was widespread and heard by too many