Learning Journal – Women and Writing. Fionn Coughlan-Wills.
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Index. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 3
Charlotte Brontë and the Feminine …………………………………………………………………………… 4
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea and Critical-Fiction ……………………………………………………… 7
Top Girls and Superficial Feminism ……………………………………………………………………………. 11 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Feminist Rhetoric ……………………………………. 15 Digression on a Secondary Point of Research.
Outro… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 19
Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 21
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Introduction. In this journal I have decided to use Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as the hub to my critical analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea. The texts will be primarily discussed in relation to Woolf’s text. This is for a number of reasons. As A Room of One’s Own owes its fundamental conception as an extended essay and employs the prosodic devices of fiction, Woolf encapsulates many of the issues that affect the efficacy of women in writing whilst adopting the forms of discussed texts, creating a facet of metafiction. This offers up Woolf’s writing as a self-evident example of women in writing for critical evaluation. The journal will also examine the other themes that contribute to the body of A Room… in relation to the accompanying texts. The use of irony and satire to emphasise cultural biases, implication of the woman writer as a subculture and the economic determinism that resonates within all the texts, constitute the difficulties under discussion. The understanding of Woolf’s ironic deconstructionist tropes is essential in analysing her criticism of the masculine social hierarchy. Critically, Woolf’s use of rhetoric for academic function facilitates the dialogue between the grand narratives of biology, gender and politics that have informed the writing styles of women writers during specific eras. To reflect this bearing of context, the texts will be discussed in order of publication with the exception of Woolf’s text which will be discussed last.
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Charlotte Brontë and the Feminine. Charlotte Brontë made clear the purposes of the gender indeterminate pseudonyms employed by the Brontë sisters in the 1850 preface to Wuthering Heights; the ‘Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell’. In this she divulges: the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because -- without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’ (Brontë, 1850: Internet)
Like the Jane Eyre of fiction, Brontë shows the conflict between passion and propriety in the altering of the Christian names. The passion in writing a work of fiction is marred by the decorum in the masking of the author’s sex. It is made clear, the necessity to adopt pseudonyms implying male authorship also affect a crisis of identity. The main arbiter of the decision is the external censorship by ‘critics’ (Brontë, 1850) prompted by the gender construct of femininity and its expected reflection in the work of the woman artist. It is implied that for a woman to be a woman the feminine aspects of behaviour must be a permanent fixture. To study Jane Eyre in light of Virginia Woolf’s commentary appears to draw upon a polemic of Brontë’s writing style. Was she writing in a feminine mode and therefore imitating the style of successful male authors of the time, therefore corroborating the gender stereotypes of the time, or did she apply a feminist approach to the degree that her era could allow? What Woolf highlights as the stylistic error of the early nineteenth-century woman novelists is the supposition that a man or male writing is a benchmark of quality. Brontë obviously did not feel any of her or her sisters’ writings to be ‘feminine’ (see quote above). Woolf marks Brontë as an advocate of the majority of female writers that admitted in her writing that ‘she was “only a woman”, or protesting that she was “as good as a man”’ (Woolf, 2002: 74). Particular passages of Jane Eyre suggest that Brontë was sympathetic to the sexism of the day:
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In the deep shade, at the father end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face. (Brontë, 2006: 338).
This now infamous depiction of ‘the madwoman in the attic’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 2000: 1) still reverberates in modern literature due to its influence upon Gilbert and Gubar’s (2000) study of women in nineteenth-century literature. The pronoun use ‘it’ alone elicits that Jane is not a paragon of feminist ideals. Jane denotes the ‘virile force’ (Brontë, 2006: 338) of Bertha Mason. This suggests the negative connotations of masculine traits, and therefore active traits, within female behaviours. Combined with the animalistic imagery of ‘all fours’ and the ‘mane’ these passages are strangely compliant with Cecil Gray’s maxim in A Room… that female attempts at male-dominated arts ‘[are] like a dog walking on its hind legs’ (Woolf, 2002: 56). Woolf attributes this paradox in Jane Eyre to Brontë’s excess of passion that make her ‘write in a rage where she should write calmly’ (Woolf, 2002: 70). However, an alternative argument is that Brontë situates the madwoman so that Jane is ‘a sane version of Bertha’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 2000: 366) and therefore her alter-ego. The parallels that Gilbert and Gubar identify between Jane and Bertha mount to a large number. Particularly it is Bertha who acts as a proxy for Jane’s desires by destroying Thornfield, and in part Mr Rochester, in order to dilute the master’s aversion to inequity. Without Bertha as a catalyst, the dialogues between equality and spirituality would never be complete in the book. Rochester’s mutilation and Jane’s inheritance are both symbolic of Jane’s triumph in her spiritual and literal journeys. It is in the final section, including St. John Rivers, where Jane proves her immunity to the ‘vehicle[s] of masculine self-aggrandizement and domination’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 2000: 366). The decline of a second proposal, offering the piety of a missionary’s wife, exposes Jane’s necessity for passion as well as religious dedication. Further reinforcing Bertha as Jane’s alter-ego is the inversion of the previous dependent and provider relationship of Jane and Rochester.
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When considering Jane’s description of Bertha in the light of her own evident beliefs of equality, contradictions and inconsistencies begin to form. For example: is Jane complicit with this treatment of another woman? Does Brontë stray from her feminist perspective in order to observe the rubrics of the day regarding madness and the Otherness of foreign people? Virginia Woolf appears to think that these weaknesses diminish Brontë’s achievements in Jane Eyre. It is Emily Brontë who Woolf attributes the achievement of maintaining her literary style against the criticism of the society surrounding her, along with Jane Austen. Our seminar groups all identified that the depiction of the infant Jane Eyre is artificial in presentation in that her character is too eloquent in voice for a ten year old. It is suggested that while Brontë’s narration through Jane’s adult voice is depicted as reflecting on the past, she projects certain qualities of maturity upon her infant self. Jane’s loquacious temperament from a young age makes the overall depiction of her as a neglected orphan less authentic and suggests the characteristics to be an exercise of verisimilitude for Jane’s later ventures. In an 1848 review, Elizabeth Rigby cited the in ‘brilliant retrospective sketching… it is the childhood and not the child that interests you. The little Jane’ is indistinct in representation by her ‘dogmatic speeches’ and ‘infantine earnestness’ (Rigby, 1848, Internet). This definition of Rigby’s is evident Jane’s early religious dialogues with Mr Brocklehurst as well as in conversations with Bessie. After rebuking Mrs Reed, Jane tells Bessie ‘It was quite right, Bessie: your missis has not been my friend: she has been my foe’ (Brontë, 2006: 49) and on leaving Gateshead she cries ‘Good-bye to Gateshead’ (Brontë, 2006: 50). The young Jane’s supposing of superiority over Bessie in her tone and her understanding of irony in the latter quote makes her young character an anomaly in the novel. The incongruity of the personality to the material age of Jane . Critics of the period and later, including The Spectator (1847), Rigby (1848) and Lord David Cecil (1934) deride Jane Eyre for the protagonist’s inconsistencies. Brontë’s impetus in depicting a strong heroine, therefore prefixing the first feminists, is hypothesised as the problem affecting the realism in a classical realist bildungsroman.
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Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea and Critical-Fiction. The biographical details of Jean Rhys are liable to be prioritised over, and evaluated against, her works as an author. A recent Independent article denotes her being ostracised for her West Indian upbringing and then having been ‘shunned by the literary establishment after a descent into alcoholism and prostitution.’ (Usborne, 2012). As a woman writer, Rhys suffered many of the obstacles that Virginia Woolf outlined twenty-eight years before in A Room of One’s Own. Rhys wrote in 1957 that she had ‘No privacy, no cash… No desk to write on, no table even. No one understands’ (Angier, 1990: 476). Rhys therefore experienced the historic difficulties of women writers, such as lack of security, absence of private space and these she shared with other historic female figures. For instance, in A Room… the metafictional Judith Shakespeare and Mary Carmichael as well as Jane Austen. It can be felt that Wide Sargasso Sea is a product of the ‘still-evolving relationship between women writers and their society.’ (Showalter, 2009: 12). Rhys shows the shift from female authors effectively writing as an underground culture, apart from the mainstream, male-dominated literature and donning equal artistic credibility. Furthermore, the idea of the ethnic division in Rhys resonates in her writing. Wide Sargasso Sea, as the titular principle of the novel, suggests at the cultural and social gulf between Europe and the West Indies. Rhys’ conflict with identity is comparable to that of Bertha Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea but to label the depiction as autobiographical is reductive. ‘My name is not Bertha; why do you call me Bertha?’ ‘Because it is a name I am particularly fond of. I think of you as Bertha.’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. (Rhys, 1997: 86) ‘Certainly I will, my dear Bertha.’ ‘Not Bertha tonight,’ she said. ‘Of course, on this of all nights, you must be Bertha.’ ‘As you wish,’ she said. (Rhys, 1997: 87) These passages from Wide Sargasso Sea present a central dispute concerning the portrayal of gender in literature. Here the stereotyping of the man and the woman is indicative of the binary oppositions that pervade their respective characteristics. The implementation of binary opposition is 7 Fionn Coughlan-Wills – 110032432.
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suggestive of a hierarchy and this is the same within Rhys’ text. The yielding tone of the clause, ‘As you wish,’ suggests the subordination of Antoinette Mason in relation to her husband. The line could be interpreted as a lighter-toned ironic comment to imply Rochester’s self-aggrandising personality. However, either interpretation affords the dialogue the same perspective on the representation of gender. Rochester is depicted as the assertive predicator of ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak, 1988: 76) towards the passive subservience of Antoinette. The characters show a transparent inequity of power. As Hélène Cixous has asserted in her theory: ‘binary oppositions are heavily imbricated in the patriarchal value system’ (Eagleton, 1996: 147). That is to say that on the surface, Wide Sargasso Sea reads as the defence of a nineteenth-century female character and is the criticism of her victimisation. By giving Antoinette a voice and a developed history, Rhys reveals the psychological violence that is subject to women and that manipulation is not necessarily that of the physical but can be that of the emotional. However, the essentialist conception of the binary oppositions are, in Wide Sargasso Sea, oversimplifying. Spivak notes that Rochester’s epistemic violence is a covert affront to ‘constitute the colonial subject as Other’ (Spivak, 1988: 76). Rhys’ concerns for Creole identity reverberate deeper than race or sex. The renaming of Antoinette by Rochester is seen by the West Indian tradition as a form of spirit theft, synonymous with the religious entity of ‘Obeah’, suggesting Antoinette to be a ‘zombi’ (Rhys, 1997: 137). A parallel can be draw between Antoinette and the slaves who were given anglicised names by their masters; this draws on Antoinette as property of Rochester. On the other hand, this inception of the woman as soulless begins to subvert the notions of identity and the possible political commentaries of Rhys’ text. The political power of feminist texts has been questioned by critics such as Judith Butler who equates feminism as an ‘identity politics’ whose essentialism ‘fixes, and constrains the very “subjects” that it hopes to represent and liberate’ (Butler, 2006: 203). Likewise, with Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys is empowered by the flat character of Bertha Mason portrayed in Jane Eyre, allowing her to form the rounded character of Antoinette Cosway, whilst being restrained by the final coda of the character that Brontë creates. Due to the 8 Fionn Coughlan-Wills – 110032432.
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novel’s status as a prequel to Brontë’s text, Rhys has no control over the closure to Antoinette’s story. Her identification with the older text restricts any chance of development much like the relationship Butler explains is between women and feminism. Instead, she manipulates the nuances of her tragic end to imply the ambiguity of the closure. Ultimately, this is predetermined by the literary tradition of Jane Eyre’s narrative. However, the dream sequence alludes to the imposed destiny of Antoinette and the inevitability that ‘Jane Eyre [is] a kind of ghost inside the words, an echo, at times indistinct, at others very definite’ (Newman, 1995: 22). Rhys highlights the discourse of Creole identity in the closure of the novel while juxtaposing it with the concept of fate. In the prophetic dream Antoinette denotes ‘the pool at Coulibri’ that signifies the West Indies and ‘the man who hated me… calling… Bertha!’ (Rhys, 1997: 123), reflecting the oppressed and obfuscated Creole identity. This example of resolute determinism: ‘Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do’ (Rhys, 1997: 124) echoes the feminist dilemma that Butler outlines. To equate with the older conceptions of a movement, like Rhys’ novel does with Jane Eyre, is to negate the possibility of development, as the older ideology is entrenched in the past and the world around it moves forward. Where Brontë’s interest was Jane, Rhys is more focused on the figure of Bertha, as are the modern critics. Rhys mirrors this argument by questioning the narrative conclusion, that: how can there be empowerment, if the only release from captivity and madness is death? Death, for sake of the mirrored feminism as an ‘identity politics’ argument, is the predetermined ending formed by the ideals and interests of a past generation. As a result, the compulsory intersecting of Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre, signals the question of to what extent the identity associated with a feminist tradition becomes ineffective and selfmarginalising. At what point is the woman writer subdued and eliminated by her own literary tradition. Rhys’ form of theoretical metafiction, viewing Wide Sargasso Sea as a critical-fiction hybrid genre, appears to conclude as one solution. By a way of deconstructing older feminine or feminist
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texts in a fictive mode, Rhys affords the reader or researcher the otherwise allusive contemporary perspective. Rhys is therefore an example of a female author tackling and exploiting the advantages of her own extreme marginalisation. The depiction of a previously voiceless female character is an achievement for feminist writing but the structure of Wide Sargasso Sea alludes to the need for a shift to the more androgynous forms that Woolf campaigns for twenty-eight years earlier.
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Top Girls and Superficial Feminism. Caryl Churchill challenges the problems with a form of feminism emerging in the late nineteenseventies and early nineteen-eighties that she portrays as being purely aesthetic. This form of feminism lacks coherence with the cooperative facets of Churchill’s preferred socialism and depicts a minority of successful women to be symbolic of the whole sex. For example, Haley (2010) states biographical detail of Churchill that, ‘American feminists told her that things were going well for women [in America] because more top executives were women.’ (Haley, 2010: 2). Churchill is particularly critical of the way in which women comply to the oppressive rules of a phallocentric society in order to appear to have changed its fundamental principles. Churchill implies that this form of feminism is only an out-manoeuvring of the dominant system, rather than an attempt or achievement in subverting it. Therefore, the victory of a handful of women is depicted as a mere veiling of the failure to empower the majority, who are out of reach of the male-dominated discourses such as the economy and other professional environments. The play formulates the dichotomous relation between the private sphere of domesticity and the public occupation of career building. Marlene is the primary representation of this. Her role in society is an ambiguous paradox for feminism. Marlene appears to be a proponent for the cause of women in the workplace, as her job entitles her to promote women’s employability and she herself is an example of successful female management. However she does this symbolic action while neglecting to challenge ‘the larger patterns of dominance’ (Todd, 1995: 3) that pervade the workplace. A female client of Marlene’s says she is a secretary to ‘three of them, really, they share me’ (Churchill, 2001: 30). The use of the plural pronoun ‘them’ to identify multiple employers implies the strong probability that the group are male superiors. Correspondingly, the verb ‘shared’ debases the employed woman to a commodity rather than a colleague. Also, Marlene states that not mentioning the intention to marry ‘would probably help’ the prospects of a female interviewee, as well as not wearing a wedding ring, ‘saves taking it off’ (Churchill, 2001: 30). What Marlene is recommending to her client infers a subtext that women who decide to combine the opposed 11 Fionn Coughlan-Wills – 110032432.
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discourses of work and maternity are of less worth in a professional capacity. This mirrors that of the androcentric structure of business. Marlene’s philosophy of incompatible work and family reinforce prejudices that prevent the development of equal opportunities. Congruently, by incorporating this into her general business acumen Marlene informs other female workers as to the imposed necessity of conforming to these unwritten rules. Churchill’s quandary is therefore a question of feminist ethics. She presents the predicament that women ‘have been able to compete but… without concern for the powerless, winning such competitions does not constitute a feminist victory.’ (Haley, 2010: 3). The absence of a male presence in Top Girls is prevalent in the dialogue as well as in the production of the play. Churchill’s crafting of an onstage female dominance is a visual subversion. Todd (1995), states that the casting decisions are ‘striking seen against a dramatic tradition in which the great majority of characters are male’ (Todd, 1995: 3). Act one, set in the ‘expressionistic place’ (Pullin, 2003: 1) of the restaurant with its prominent female figures of history and legend, reflects the tendencies of the women to compete with one another to be heard both literally in the restaurant and figuratively in their respective eras and social structures. The eclectic mixtures of dinner guests discuss the topics of success, infamy and unfulfillment. Many of the guests discuss the role of family and disillusionment as well as the affect, both positive and negative, men had on their lives. The anonymous role of the waitress who serves the women is an interesting juxtaposition in the scene due to her silence and subservience to the distinguished women. This presents the inequities between the sexes and also inside the gender to have transcended history and the majority cultures. Equally, the progress of women and equality is depicted as a dialogue between themselves and women of the past by portraying it as a literal encounter. Supporting the subversion of men being passive in Top Girls are the allusions to ulterior men. For example, Win, an employee, explains her out-performing of multiple men, having ‘supported [one] for four years’, married one only ‘in a moment of weakness’ and been ‘better than the rest’
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(Churchill, 2001: 65) in medical research. Win names men ‘awful bullshitters’ (Churchill, 2001: 65) for defending the professional advantage with the pretence of excessively difficult occupations. Women like Marlene and Win are juxtaposed with Mrs Kidd who is an example of women who are happy with the status quo of the marginalised female. Both Win and Marlene are ridiculed for their overlapping of female biology and culturally masculine qualities. Mrs Kidd is portrayed as being indoctrinated by a gender-biased system telling Marlene, ‘if it was a man he’d get over it as something normal.’ (Churchill, 2001: 58) the implication is of Marlene being abnormal. Equally, the success of Win makes her feel like ‘five different people’ (Churchill, 2001: 65) which denotes the crisis of identity that the intersecting of cultural patterns of gender can induce. The female, feminine, feminist dilemma is a major theme that Churchill manages to process objectively onstage and within the important historical context of Thatcher’s Britain. Marlene is representative of the successful business woman of the economy and characters such as Joyce and Mrs Kidd are restrained and attached to the traditional roles; as a playwright Churchill clearly favours neither party. This objective portrayal is itself implicit of a third alternative. The single sexed drama further emphasises Churchill’s scrutiny of the motives of the capitalist individualist woman and also of the women who defend the limitations of women to domestic inertia. Passages in A Room of One’s Own comment upon the strategies of women in relation to others of their own sex, seeming to support those who are most similar to Marlene. Virginia Woolf remarks: I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. (Woolf, 2002: 109).
Woolf stresses the importance of individualism over the ideology of an indistinguishable collective. Although, she does not tout the individual woman’s success as feminism. The irony of her comments penetrates the façade of reality dictating that women must band together in individualist obscurity to represent a whole sex. Furthermore, Woolf’s later comments ‘Women are hard on women. Women dislike women’ (Woolf 2002: 109) project the broad biases of innate incompatibility and
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therefore incapability. Woolf’s comments suggest that the expectation and necessity of formulating a protesting subculture to become equal undermines the principle of equality.
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Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Feminist Rhetoric. The feminist rhetoric of Virginia Woolf comprises much of the strategies of classical rhetoricians but with an alternative impetus in deconstructing the aspects of androcentric society for radical forms of analysis. Much advancement in accomplished synthesising of ideas is due to the incorporation of alternative discourses such as counter-factual history and the effect of consistent consciousnessraising anecdotes and theories. Woolf’s use of comparable devices and strategies will be discussed here. Woolf’s most often utilises hypophora to emphasise the threat of male censorship to the interests of the feminist movement. Topical judicial men of the day are targeted specifically by Woolf for dual purpose: in order to mock and highlight the reality of oppression. Woolf quips: ‘Do you promise me that behind that red curtain over there the figure of Sir Charles Biron is not concealed?’ (Woolf, 2002: 81) and that; ‘That cupboard there - you say it holds clean table-napkins only; but what if Sir Archibald Bodkin were concealed among them?’ (Woolf, 2002: 109). Both Archibald Bodkin and Chartres Biron were part of the prosecution in the obscenity trial of lesbian writer Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, at which Woolf attended. The language used to describe these men denotes devious acts of concealment. This is suggests the lecture as a form of performance and is used to humorous effect. However, the undertones of these sketches subvert the male’s position to that of a passive recipient supressed into hiding. Similarly, the allusion to the evident importance of the feminist female to these men of authority suggests the women’s potential power to force progress onto the existing, inherently sexist system. These humorous digressions most often mark a change to a serious tone or topic in Woolf’s rhetoric. Immediately succeeding Woolf’s enquiry as to Biron’s whereabouts are the discussions of lesbianism and its lack of representation in literature. Woolf denotes the implicit nature of the phrase ‘Chloe liked Olivia…’ (Woolf, 2002: 81). Then is the synecdoche of ‘Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for the first time in literature’ (Woolf, 2002: 81). Before a radical feminist reworking of women’s
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sexuality into fiction, Woolf denotes that women were represented as antagonists to each other in constant conflict. The allegation being that this has shaped a trend in women’s representation. The phrase ‘Chloe like Olivia’ prepares a function of catachresis to connect to a later discussion in Woolf’s essay. Directly preceding the enquiry of Bodkin’s location, Woolf articulates a purposefully generalised statement. She says, ‘Women dislike women’ (Woolf, 2002: 109) which mirrors the structure of the Chloe liked Olivia sentence while denoting its blunt contrast. Woolf brings to attention the problems with indiscriminate generalisation with an ironic judgment that would most likely gratify the members of an anti-lesbian judiciary. Catachresis works in another form which is applicable to this statement. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak notes the ‘master words’, such as ‘women’, used to ‘name the multiplicities of experience and environment under broader single, signs’ (Morton, 2003: 34). This criticism advocates that there is no definitive woman and yet the representation of them is one of an indistinguishable mass that transcends history as being incapable of progress. Similar to the contrasts of the like and dislike sentences are Woolf’s consistent uses of antithesis. Digressions in her lines of thought regularly present the antithetical arguments. In a mixture of ironic and sincere tones is the derision of Mary Seaton’s mother for not learning ‘the great art of making money’ (Woolf, 2002: 23); as well as Charlotte Brontë, whose ‘anger was tampering with the integrity’ (Woolf, 2002: 73) of her work; and the female students of Newnham and Girton who are ‘disgracefully ignorant’ (Woolf, 2002: 110). The presentation of these arch-arguments by assuming the thought of the sexist and homophobic opposition strengthens Woolf’s rebuttal against them by making prejudices explicitly clear and further outlining the challenging circumstances. Woolf’s subsequent praising of these women is often similar to this, that is applied to Brontë, ‘what genius, what integrity it must have required to in face of all that criticism, in midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it’ (Woolf, 2002: 75). The retort then signifies the resourcefulness of women in the face of an oppressive culture and the pragmatism required in challenging it by degrees. Often this instance of alloiosis implies that the maternal abilities of female 16 Fionn Coughlan-Wills – 110032432.
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biology have prevented women from advancing outside the nurturing positions. An example is Mary Seaton’s mother with thirteen children. However, the consequence of this detail is to emphasise the males who monopolise on the biological disposition by enforcing gender and inequalities upon society, such as the legal doctrine of coverture before the Married Women’s Property Act 1882. The combination of the devices discussed above enhances the contingency in the closure of A Room of One’s Own. The conclusion ties together the progress of emancipation from oppressors and the decreasing expectations of domesticity. Woolf disregards the defining of individuals by sex urging the relation toward the broader perspectives of reality, rather than biologically dictated essentialism. For this reason Woolf’s conclusion strikes as an inclination to the philosophy of the existentialists. She is at once emphatic of personal responsibility whilst arguing the benevolence of the campaign for female equality. Her hypothesis of the dawning of a liberated woman writer in the near future is arguably accurate, now in retrospect, but in context it is impossible for Woolf to have been certain. What is made transparent is her certainty that this goal is achievable with persistent work, by the individual, toward a common end.
Digression on a Secondary Point of Research. Having read the article, Sally Alexander’s ‘A Room of One’s Own: 1920s Feminist Utopias’ I now understand a logical reasoning as to why it was Virginia Woolf in 1929 who formed the seminal argument for the emergence of women in writing. Alexander highlights ‘the vote, an independent income and birth control’ (Alexander, 2000: 280) as major components of the feminist agenda of the period that birthed the facilitation of Woolf’s opinions and outreach. Along with female suffragists of the Labour Party Alexander draws attention to the fact that the political, social and sexual landscape of the early twentieth century was evolving for the better in favour of women’s rights and consequently professional capacities for women such as Woolf.
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However, Woolf’s championing of women’s rights appears very selective when reading other materials of hers. Her essay directed to the female audiences of Newnham and Girton College, Cambridge strike as a sanctioning of an elitist type of woman from a specifically stratified society. The class-consciousness of Woolf reveals a belief in the polluting of aristocratic art by the workingmasses. The implications of this are that Woolf’s campaigning of equality between the sexes is undermined by its pretentious elitism. On talking of H.G Well’s work, Woolf remarks of the prevalence of working-class characters: ‘Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish whatever institutions and ideals may be provided for them by the generosity of their creator?’ (Woolf, 2003: 72). Woolf’s opinion on James Joyce’s Ulysses are noted in her diary as an ‘underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are’ (Woolf, 2003: 89). It is also poignant that Woolf specifically marks the year nineteen-nineteen as the year of enfranchisement for women. Total suffrage was not achieved until nineteen-thirty-two. What Woolf cites here is the vote gained for women over thirty and wealthier unmarried women (Whitfield, 2001: 127).
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Outro… Women – but are you not sick to death of the word? (Woolf, 2002: 109)
In this journal, I have explored the prominence of women’s writing at key stages of its development as mainstream literature. On a personal level, I have enjoyed the writings of Jean Rhys and Virginia Woolf, and found them to be particularly inspirational female authors, both in their style, fluency and in the strength of their convictions. The difficulties of the journal were stylistic predicaments, that of admixing broader perspectives, concise analysis and personal reflection as well as the influence of group work upon individual learning. However, overcoming these and making informed decisions about content in a flexible medium were overall positive writing experiences. I have reflected in my writing the triptych structure of the developing themes and perspectives of women’s writing and how most of these interconnect. I attribute to Charlotte Brontë the establishment of an essentially feminine style, imitating the prejudices and concerns of male authors, while beginning to develop the feminist concerns for equality. Then as Virginia Woolf writes clearly from a feminist perspective in engaging with the literature of women past, the then present and future, her work is critical in defining the polemics relevant to the module. As well Woolf foreshadows the need for ‘androgynous writers’ as opposed to those defined by sex. Jean Rhys, through the amalgamated genres of fiction and criticism, comments implicitly upon the feminist movement from a feminist perspective whilst indicating a shift towards the female author, undefined by a political tradition. Finally, Caryl Churchill’s dramatic examination of feminism exhibits qualities that suggest Churchill only happens to be a female. It is not felt in her writing that she is obviously forced into being feminine as a cultural expectation or that feminism must play an active role in her evaluation of it. Her writing appears as an observation of the feminist movement rather than a criticism of her own restraints as a female author. 19 Fionn Coughlan-Wills – 110032432.
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One of our lecturers noted early in the process of this module the necessity in the coming years to change the module from ‘Women and Writing’ to ‘Gender and Writing’, or an otherwise applicable title, in order to reflect the change in the varieties of sex and gender that exist presently and have a presence in literature. At first I did not understand this and disagreed with the line of thought. However, an in depth study of women’s writing proves the validity of this observation and I now agree that the distinctions between sex and gender holds more importance in the analysis of literature. A personal reflection upon this is the paradox of discussing the disproportion of women in literature in a room attended by a majority of female literature students. A further interest I have that has been provoked by this journal is the polemic of: is literature reflecting reality or does reality change and progress to reflect the literature. The course has felt like a unique module in the history of a major development in literature. Similarly, that without the writings of female authors such as those selected, literature as a discourse would be hampered by the loss. Therefore, from an idealist perspective, it feels as though the latter part of that polemic is true, if not strongly credible due to these texts.
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Bibliography. Alexander, S. (2000) Room of One's Own: 1920s Feminist Utopias. Women. 11 (3) Winter, 273-288. Angier, C. (1990) Jean Rhys. New ed. Glasgow, Andre Deutsch. Brontë, C. (1850) Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell. [Internet] Sheffield, Sheffield University. Available from: <http://mick-armitage.staff.shef.ac.uk/anne/biognotc.html> [Accessed 28 March 2012]. Brontë, C. (2006) Jane Eyre. London, Penguin Books Ltd. Butler, J. (2006) Gender Trouble. 2nd ed. London, Routledge. Churchill, C. (2001) Top Girls. London, Methuen Publishing Ltd. Eagleton, M. (1996) Working with Feminist Criticism. Hoboken NJ, Wiley-Blackwell. Gilbert, S. and Gubar, S. (2000) The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven, Yale University Press. Haley, E. G. (2010) Top Girls. Masterplots. Ipswich MA, Salem Press. Hope, T. (2012) Revisiting the Imperial Archive: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, and the Decomposition of Englishness. College Literature. 39 (1), 51-73. Lamonaca, M. (2002) Jane’s Crown of Thorns: Feminism and Christianity in Jane Eyre. Studies in the Novel. 34 (3), 245. Morton, S. (2003) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London, Routledge. Newman, J. (1995) The Ballistic Bard: Postcolonial Fictions. London, Hodder Arnold.. Perkins Gilman, C. and Shulman, R. (2009) The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories. Oxford, Oxford Classics. Pullin, N. (2003) Cyclopaedia of Literary Places. Ipswich MA, Salem Press. Rhys, J. (1997) Wide Sargasso Sea. London, Penguin Books Ltd. Rigby, E. (1848) Vanity Fair--and Jane Eyre. [Internet] Plattsburgh, Quarterly Review. Available from: <http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/peter.friesen/default.asp?go=252> [Accessed 5 April 2012]. Showalter, E. (2009) A Literature Of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Charlotte Brontë to Doris Lessing. London, Virago Press. Spivak, G.C. (1988) Can the Subaltern Speak? [Internet] MC Gill. Available from: <http://www.mcgill.ca/files/crclaw-discourse/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf> [Accessed 2 April 2012]. Todd, K. (1995) Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series. Ipswich MA, Salem Press. 21 Fionn Coughlan-Wills – 110032432.
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Truss, L. (2009) Eats, Shoots and Leaves. London, Fourth Estate. Usborne, S. (2012) A Happy Twist in the Tale of Literature's Great Outsider. [Internet] London, The Independent. Available from: <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/ahappy-twist-in-the-tale-of-literatures-great-outsider-7537791.html#> [Accessed 27 March 2012]. Whitfield, B. (2001) The Extension of the Franchise, 1832- 1931. Portsmouth, Heinemann. Woolf, V. (1931) Professions for Women. [Internet] Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg. Available from: <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200771.txt> [Accessed 22 February 2012]. Woolf, V. (2002) A Room of One’s Own. New ed. London, Penguin Classics. Woolf, V. (2003) The Common Reader: Volume I. New ed. London, Vintage Books. Woolf, V. (2003) A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf. Mariner Books.
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