James Baquet

    The first time I heard of English author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), it was in the mildly humorous title of Edward Albee’s very unfunny drama, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” The title plays on the Disney song, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” Woolf’s name stands in as a substitute for the idea of facing reality without illusions.

    As an early modernist writer, that is exactly what Woolf did. She stripped away the pretensions so common in 19th-century literature and asked the hard questions. One of these was about the role of women in literature, and in society.

    In her time, women were coming into their own socially. In her native England, they were given the right to vote in a limited way in 1918, and fully in 1928; in America, women were given the vote in 1920. The struggle for women’s rights was a common feature in her time.

    It is no wonder then that Woolf turned her keen intellect to the advancement of women. As part of the informal but influential Bloomsbury Group, she was one of a number who worked to advance progressive social causes.

    Two of her works stand out in this regard. The first, a work of fiction, was “Orlando.” The titular character was a male poet who became female and lived for centuries. It is essentially a history of English literature from a feminist perspective.

    An especially interesting chapter discusses the fictional “Judith Shakespeare,” sister to William, who was “as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school.” Living the life of a subjugated woman, she finally kills herself, in contrast to her brother’s astonishing success.

    The second, published a year later, was the long essay called “A Room of One’s Own.” In it, she proposed that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” The lack of one or the other — often both — accounted for the dominance of men in literature. The “Room” of the title is both literal — referring to actual working space — and figurative, meaning that women had neither the financial resources nor the social freedom to pursue writing as a career.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. control, power (over)

    2. one who seeks equal rights for women

    3. attempts to make something inferior seem superior

    4. rejecting traditional ways

    5. good mind

    6. explained

    7. aspect, point

    8. oppressed, put down

    9. highly excited

    10. point of view