SCRIBBLE
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Thor and Hymir go fishing - from an Icelandic manuscript c. 1700
oolf ostensibly draws from Bronte’s words to again bring to light the discrimination she suffered because of her sex when she began her exploration of Women and Fiction – being challenged for walking on the grass instead of the gravel path, being banned from the library where “ladies are only admitted…if accompanied by a” man, and that her research in the British Museum reveals the extremely sexist work about women written by men. Perhaps like Bronte, Woolf is suggesting that women are confined to a metaphorical or physical room when they fail to conform to society’s expectations. However, ninety years later, we’re forced to acknowledge that we now self-perpetuate these stereotypes, whereby we influence others and gain our identity from the numbers of shares or likes we obtain on social media as part of click-tivism feminism and ultimately imprison ourselves in yet another “room”.
only empowered women can empower women. Only then can we truly influence others positively, when comfortable with our own identity. Perhaps Kimberley Reader’s right in assuming that it’s unlikely one’ll ever be able to “be oneself” and positively “influence others” when simply “the fight has changed, the stereotypes remain, and the cause will never die”
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herefore, when Woolf writes that it is “most important to be oneself than anyone else”, this is of course true, but perhaps too ‘out-of-reach’ for both females pre-1928 and post-1928. We once lived in a society where women were not free to be themselves and females couldn’t write as they were restricted “by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom”. Yet, we now find ourselves living in a society that Moran depicts in How To Be A Woman; that “when a woman says, 'I have nothing to wear!', what she really means is, 'There's nothing here for who I'm supposed to be today”. Woolf’s sentiment is insightful, but the reality is, women have always found themselves in a society that restricts them. Once we understand that “feminism is not about overpowering or emasculating men in society. It is not a war between the sexes or an attempt by women to become more ‘manly’” , and that we must first empower ourselves to see men as allies and not the “opposing faction”, because 24
AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD NORSE-ICELANDIC LITERATURE: PART ONE BY MISS HALE
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The literature of medieval Iceland is a great world treasure – elaborate, various, strange, profound, and as eternally current as any of the other great literary treasures” (Smiley, 2000. p.3). celanders pride themselves on being a literary nation. They will tell you that, per capita, more books are written, published and sold per year in Iceland than any other nation. November traditionally
