Aglimpsethroughthelookingglass

A detailed Summary of Aglimpsethroughthelookingglass

For centuries, women have sought out to endow oneself and society; to implode fiction; to create clearinghouses of ideas without the interference of man. Alas, the glass ceiling is broke; the door unlocked. In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf skillfully, using the technique of stream of consciousness, discusses the problems of women writers. The journey she reveals illuminates our own journeys. Through the powerful use of stylistic techniques, Woolf illustrates insightful views towards male superiority, feminism, and liberation, as well as the historic barriers that prevented women from pursuing writing careers. Woolf expresses these views in a convincing, symbolic and poetic manner. Her wit and well-informed optimism bars against stupidity and prejudice. Virginia Woolf takes one on an erudite walk through a conversational novel that is lively, and enlightening.

Male superiority is a profound, psychological and physical hindrance to the prevalence of women. Historically, women were mentally, morally, and physically inferior to men. Woolf carefully demonstrates this through a poetic prose composed by Lady Winchilsea.

How are we fallen! Fallen by mistaken rules, and education's more than Nature's fools; debarred from al

l improvements of the mind, and to be dull, expected and designed; and if someone would soar above the rest, with warmer fancy, and ambition pressed, so strong the opposing faction still appears...My lines decried, and my employment thought an useless folly or presumptuous fault...

Any women born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. (Woolf A Room...51)

In a condescending manner, Woolf suggests that the reason why there was no female Shakespeare, is not that women are biologically inferior to men, but that there was simply no 'room' for women to develop themselves, symbolically speaking. She critiques contemporary male writing and states that it is too full of the "I," which announces virility and masculinity. She also recognizes that women are inferior to men because of the weight from their fathers. (A Room... 49)

Woolf offers solutions to women's mediocrity and repeatedly states her simple thesis that in order for a women writer to be successful, that she must have a room, money, encouragement, and confidence. Her final comment about the brilliant mind, reveals her own extraordinary lucidity and lack of self-preoccupation.

I have told you the very low opinion in which you [women] were held by Mr. Oscar Browning. I have indicated what Napoleon once thought of you and what Mussolini thinks now...I have copied out for your benefit the advice of the critic about courageously acknowledging the limitations of your sex. I have referred to Professor X and given prominence to his statement that women are intellectually, morally and physically inferior to men . . . (Woolf A Room... 110)

Feminism is also depicted in the following quotation: "A thousand stars were flashing across the blue wastes of the sky. One seemed alone with an inscrutable society." (Woolf A Room... 26) This clearly, yet symbolically, describes feminism. The 'wastes of the sky,' represents how society is full of men, crowding the space, leaving no 'room' for women. The one star that is alone, represents the whole of the

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Approximate Word count = 1462
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English