Presentation on Feminism in the works of Virginia Woolf

1. A Feminist Perspective of Virginia Woolf’s Novels

2. Name: Rajyaguru Dhvani Dipakbhai
Paper Name: The Twentieth Century Literature:
1900 to World War 2
Code: 106
Subject:
A Feminist Perspective of Virginia Woolf’s Novels
Roll no: 04
Email Id: dhvanirajayguru22@gmail.com
Department: Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji University,
Bhavnagar

3. Brief Introduction of Virginia Woolf:
• Original name is Adeline Virginia Stephen, (born January 25, 1882,
London, England—died March 28, 1941, near Rodmell, Sussex).
• English writer whose novels, through their nonlinear approaches to
narrative, exerted a major influence on the genre.
• Living in Bloomsbury, Woolf’s circle of friends, including her
brothers’ friends from Cambridge, formed a group of elite writers,
artists, and philosophers known later as the Bloomsbury Group.
• The Bloomsbury Group boasted such members as E. M. Forster,
Roger Fry, and Lytton Strachey, and it was where Woolf met her
future husband, Leonard.
• She is best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway, To the
Lighthouse , “Room of One’s Own” etc..
• Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary
history, women’s writing, and the politics of power.
• She experimented with several forms of biographical writing,
composed painterly short fictions, and sent to her friends and family
a lifetime of brilliant letters.

4. What is Feminism and How Virginia Woolf influenced by this
movement?
• Feminism is the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes. Although largely originating in
the West, feminism is manifested worldwide and is represented by various institutions committed to activity
on behalf of women’s rights and interests.
• The fight for women’s vote between 1903 and the beginning of the first world war the Women’s Social and
Political Union made the suffrage issue to their key project. Parts of that group even participated in a hunger
strike in order to obtain their goal.
• At this day, women, who were demonstrating on Parliament, were sexually attacked by the police.
• Virginia was stirred by this incident as well. Therefore, she joined the “Adult Suffrage”; a moderate wing of
the movement. And also started writing for women.

5. Virginia Woolf : Feminist Writer
Not only do Virginia’s novels have to be seen in the light of modernism,
but also in the one of feminist movements.
Virginia’s first priority and main goal-woman should obtain access to
professions.
To establish a female tradition of writing, history and literature, because
she is convinced that literature ought to have a mother as well as a
father.
She was concerned with many issues like “the social and economic
context of women’s writing, the gendered nature of language, the need to
go back through literary history and establish a female literary tradition,
and the societal construction of woman” .
She was truly committed to women rights and concerned with their
position in society throughout her whole life and therefore had a major
impact on the feminist movement . Francisco Javier Pérez-Scribd

6. Summary of
Lighthouse
The novel centres on the
Ramsay family and their
visits to the Isle of Skye in
Scotland between 1910
and 1920. Following and
extending the tradition of
modernist novelists like
Marcel Proust and James
Joyce, the plot of To the
Lighthouse is secondary
to its philosophical
introspection.
Summary of Room of One’s
Own
The book describes
the adventures of a
poet who changes sex
from man to woman
and lives for
centuries, meeting the
key figures of English
literary history.
Summary of Orlando
Woolf addressed the
status of women, and
women artists in
particular, in this famous
essay, which asserts that a
woman must have money
and a room of her own if
she is to write. According
to Woolf, centuries of
prejudice and financial
and educational
disadvantages have
inhibited women's
creativity.

7. Feminism in “To The Lighthouse”
• Lily is the feminist character in the
novel..Observant, philosophical, and
independent, Lily is a painter. When Charles
says ‘Women should not write and paint”,
She challenges it by her work and proved it
wrong..
• Mrs. Ramsay wants her to marry, but she
denies..
• In Chapter 3, Lily struggles (and eventually
succeeds) in painting the picture she had first
attempted in Chapter 1, all the while
revisiting memories of Mrs. Ramsay and
contemplating the great mysteries of life,
death, art, and human experience.

8. • The feminity of the novel is also reflected through its symbols,
“The Window” is a female and that for another section „The Lighthouse‟ is male.
• Exalting the feminine principles in life over the masculine,.
• Virginia Woolf built her novel around a character embodying the life –giving role of the female.
• Another central symbol is cyclical change which is not change at all, this symbol refers to Mrs.
Ramsay herself. Mrs. Ramsay, reads a newspaper aloud, thinking that they were happier now than
they would ever be again. In so doing, Mrs. Ramsay feels that she does not only have a strong voice
in the family, but is also responsible for the welfare of its members.
• This meaning is revealed to the reader explicitly”Mrs Ramsay looked up over her knitting and met
the third stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes ,searching she alone
could search into her mind and heart... She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for
she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like the light”.
Dr. Saad Mohammed Kadhum Al-Maliky- Uni of Basrah

9. Feminist Reading of “Room of One’s
Own”
Woolf writes in this essay: “Ladies are only admitted to the
library if accompanied by a fellow of the College or
furnished with a letter of introduction”
It satirically addresses the obstacles and prejudices
encountered by women writers.
With this novel, Woolf attempts to define women’s place in
literary history.
Dr. Sangita Dubey- Shodhganga

10. • According to Woolf, centuries of prejudice and financial and educational disadvantages
have inhibited women’s creativity.
• To illustrate this she offers the example of a hypothetical gifted but uneducated sister of
William Shakespeare, who, discouraged from all but the most mundane domestic duties,
eventually kills herself.
• Woolf celebrates the work of women who have overcome that tradition and become
writers, including Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters, Anne, Charlotte,
and Emily.
• In the final section Woolf suggests that great minds are androgynous. She argues that
intellectual freedom requires financial freedom, and she entreats her audience to write
not only fiction but poetry, criticism, and scholarly works as well.
• The essay, written in lively, graceful prose, displays the same impressive descriptive
powers evident in Woolf’s novels and reflects her compelling conversational style.

11. Gender Equality in Orlando
• Orlando promotes the concept that gender and sexuality are not exclusively linked to sex, thereby
normalizing and promoting a more androgynous reality as an arguably more natural state.
• After seven days of existing in a trancelike sleep, Orlando awakens to find that his body has been
transformed into that of a female and “we have no choice but confess- he was a woman”. The narrator
ergo begins to address Orlando as “she”. When Orlando is transformed, she simply arises in her new
form, stark naked and proceeds by taking a bath. She does not seemed to have suffered during this
drastic change and neither is she shocked by it.
Judy Little writes, “Orlando arrives as an adult on the
scene of each era, she escapes normal childhood
socialization” that evolved her as “a self who is free of
the major illusions of many eras and the stereotypes of
both sexes”.
Shreya Das-feminisminindia
Sharron E. Knopp claims,
ORLANDO IS NOT A WOMAN ACTING LIKE A
MAN. ORLANDO IS A MAN. AND A WOMAN
AND THERE IS NOTHING UNNATURAL ABOUT
IT.

12. Woolf writes,
ORLANDO HAD BECOME A WOMAN THERE IS NO DENYING OF IT. BUT IN EVERY OTHER
RESPECT, ORLANDO REMAINS PRECISELY AS HE HAD BEEN. THE CHANGE OF SEX, THOUGH IT
ALTERED THEIR FUTURE, DID NOTHING WHATEVER TO ALTER THEIR IDENTITY.
When in Constantinople amongst the natives, Orlando did not experience gender differences due to her
changed sex. However as soon as she boards the Enamoured Lady to return to England, appropriately dressed as
a “young Englishwoman of high rank”, she realized that English “women are not […..] exquisitely apparelled by
nature”.
Woolf writes:
CLOTHES HAVE, THEY SAY, MORE IMPORTANT OFFICES THAN MERELY TO KEEP US WARM.
THEY CHANGE OUR VIEW OF THE WORLD AND THE WORLD’S VIEW OF US.
Cross-dressing in Orlando occurs fairly frequently. Archduke Harry dresses as a woman, but later reveals
himself as a man. Similarly, even after Orlando’s sex change, she continues to switch between clothes of both
gender. This motif functions in the novel to emphasize the similarities between men and women, underneath their
clothes, and hence, that genders should be allowed more freedom in their actions.

13. References:
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Lily Briscoe". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Feb. 2022,
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lily-Briscoe. Accessed 10 April 2022.
• Das, Shreya. “A Feminist Reading of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography.” Feminisminindia.com, Feminism in
India, 31 July 2015, https://feminisminindia.com/2015/07/31/feministic-reading-virginia-woolfs-orlando-biography/.
• Dubey, Sangeeta. “Feminism in the Novels of Virginia Woolf a Critical Study.” Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith,
Shodhganga, 2011, pp. 1–302.
• Fernald, Anne E. “A Feminist Public Sphere? Virginia Woolf’s Revisions of the Eighteenth Century.” Feminist
Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2005, pp. 158–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/20459014. Accessed 10 Apr. 2022.
• Maliky , Saad Mohammed Kadhum Al. “Reappraising Patriarchy and Matriarchy in Virginia Woolf’s To the
Lighthouse : A Feminist Study .” Journal of Basra Research for Human Sciences, vol. 45, Aug. 2020, pp. 39–53.
• Pérez, Francisco Javier. “Virginia Woolf As A Feminist Writer.” Scribd.com, 28 May 2013,
https://www.scribd.com/document/144138353/Virginia-Woolf-as-a-Feminist-Writer.
• Reid, Panthea. "Virginia Woolf". Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Mar. 2022,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf. Accessed 10 April 2022.

14. Thank you