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Example research essay topic: Room Of One Men And Women - 1,392 words

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... inactive capacity that flourished in him would have produced nothing but silence in a female member of the same line" (Zwerdling 225) results in her creation of Judith Shakespeare, the "female hero of the essay" (Schwartz 722). Woolf powerfully recounts the tragic life of "Shakespeare's extraordinarily gifted sister" (47) as she struggles to duplicate her brother's successful artistic career. As Judith's tragedy progresses from rebellion and ridicule to despair and suicide, the reader is led to "mourn and protest the loss of this woman... whose passion finally turned against itself" (Delany 182). Judith symbolizes countless brilliant, talented women who have been unable to express their genius because of society's prejudice.

As Woolf recalls ancient tales of witches and possessed women, and suggests perhaps they were "lost novelist[s], " or "suppressed Poet (s), " or "some mute and inglorious Jane Austen" (49), her calm, unruffled persona begins to fray. I n spite of her carefully crafted anonymity, Woolf's own personal indignation is evident in her forceful assertion that "a highly gifted girl who tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity... " (49). Judith Shakespeare bears an uncanny resemblance to Virginia Woolf. Rosenman suggests that Judith "was not a lie, but a version of herself" (161), and Susan Gorsky comments that Woolf "experienced the frustrations of the intelligent woman striving for freedom in an age, a society, and a family unwilling to give it" (118). Certainly, Judith's despairing suicide foreshadows Woolf's own tragic demise.

Woolf's meticulous analysis of the obstacles facing female artists, past and present, is the basis of her argument for an artist's independence, both in space and income. Her narrator poses the question: "what is the state of mind that is most propitious to the act of creation... ?" (51). Woolf answers the query by tracing the meager record of women's writings through history from Lady Winchilsea to Jane Austen, and by treating her reader to a running commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of each generation of female artists. Rosenman writes that Woolf constructs a female "tradition from the 'lives of the obscure' as well as the great... tracing the origin of great accomplishment in ordinary activities" (146 - 47).

Through historical evidence, Woolf proves that anger and indignation are incompatible with great works of literature, and that a disdain for writing stifles genius. The clarity of mind evidenced in Woolf's examples of creative genius, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, requires that the artist be insulated from the stresses and trials of an uncertain life. She describes Austen as "a woman... writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching, " and then she notes: "That was how Shakespeare wrote... " (68).

A lifestyle that produces these calm, rational emotions must be one free from irritating interruptions and financial worries. Woolf's reasoning strengthens her original thesis: one needs a room and an income to write successfully. In addition to economic necessities, Woolf writes that it is essential for women writers to cultivate a distinctive literary form. She notes that Jane Austen and Emily Bront "wrote as women write, not as men write" (74 - 75). She distinguishes between a Oman's sentence" (76) and Austen's "perfectly natural, shapely sentence" (77) stressing the need for female writers to invent a feminine style. Patrick McGee writes that "with this thought, Woolf anticipates the current interest entire feminist" (234), and Maggie cites linguistics studies affirming Woolf's theory: "men and women do use language in different ways, [and] they have different vocabularies in different kinds of sentences" (7).

The literary form proposed by Woolf encompasses literature and literary criticism from a feminine prospective. Rosenman writes that "Woolf has become a literary fore mother to later women writers and critics" (xi). Woolf understands that literature will be immeasurably enriched with an influx of uniquely feminine creativity and scholarship. Woolf wisely realizes that literature comprised solely of feminine forms and creations would be as unnatural as the male-dominated writings of past generations. She speaks strongly for the creation of woman's tradition, yet acknowledges that masculine traditions must continue to be incorporated into the arts.

The "ordinary sight of two people [a male and a female getting into a cab" (Woolf 96) is "raised to symbolic significance to suggest the restored unity of the sexes" (Zwerdling 260). Woolf's ideal writer has an androgynous mind that she likens to Shakespeare's and describes as "resonant and porous... transmit[ting] without impediment... naturally creative, incandescent and undivided" (98). Jones writes that "such a mind comprehends and transcends the feelings of both sexes" (233). Woolf's description of the "two powers [which] preside" in the soul (96) has found "some support in recent neuropsychological work on right-left brain hemispheric ity" (Delany 195).

Jones also emphasizes the fact "that men and women perceive the world differently, pursue knowledge differently, and create art differently is central to Woolf's vision" (233). A truly great writer will be comfortable with her own femininity, and will write without the consciousness that she is writing as a woman. She will understand and celebrate both the differences and the similarities between the sexes. Woolf uses her own creativity to model women's right to demand equality in the artistic world. She believes that if women's education, freedom, and equality continue to improve, and if women are able to secure private space and income, it may only take another century for women writers to take their place in the history of genius (113). Janis Paul comments that Woolf "saw with perfect clarity into the future of literature, yet she never ceased to look over her shoulder at the ghosts of the past" (47).

Woolf would be pleased to discover that less that one hundred years after her "elegy... in a college courtyard for all our female dead, the reformers, the pioneers, the artists, buried like Shakespeare's sister, in unmarked graves" (Marcus, Virginia 86), Judith Shakespeare is indeed alive and well. She is experiencing life outside the confines of her home and family; she is educated and independent. She has a room of her own, and she is creating masterpieces in the great feminine literary tradition established by the origional Judith Shakespeare -- Virginia Woolf. Bibliography: Works Cited Beja, Morris. Critical Essays on Virginia Woolf.

Critical Essays on Modern British Literature. Boston: Hall, 1985. Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. New York: Harvest-Harcourt, 1972. Benstock, Shari, ed.

Feminist Zssues in Literary Scholarship. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. Burt, John. "Irreconcilable Habits of Thought in A Room of One's Own and To the Lighthouse. " Virginia Woolf. Ed. Harold Bloom. Modern Critical Views.

New York: Chelsea, 1986. Delany, Sheila. Writing Women: Women Writers and Women in Literature: Medieval to Modern. New York: Schocken, 1983. Gordon, Mary. Forward.

A Room of One's Own. By Virginia Woolf. New York: Harvest-Harcourt, 1989. vii-xiv. Gorsky, Susan Rubinow. Virginia Woolf.

Rev ed. Twayne's English Authors Series 243. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Humm, Maggie.

Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics. New York: St. Martin's, 1986. Jones, Ellen Carol. "Androgynous Vision and Artistic Process in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. " Beja 227 - 39.

Kamuf, Peggy. "Penelope at Work: Interruptions in A Room of One's Own. " Novel: A Forum on Fiction 16 (1982): 5 - 18. Marcus, Jane. "Still Practice, A/Wrested Alphabet: Toward a Feminist Aesthetic. " Benstock 79 - 97. -- -. Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. McGee, Patrick. "Woolf's Other: The University in Her Eye. " Novel: A Forum on Fiction 23 (1990): 229 - 46.

Muller, Herbert J. "Virginia Woolf and Feminine Fiction. " Beja 73 - 84. Paul, Janis M. The Victorian Heritage of Virginia Woolf: The External World in Her Novels. Norman: Pilgrim, 1987. Rosenman, Ellen Back.

The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1986. Schwartz, Beth C. "Thinking back Through our Mothers: Virginia Woolf Reads Shakespeare. " SLA 58 (1991): 721 - 46. Samuelson, Joan. Lecture.

English 2323. Kingwood College. Kingwood, 13 April 1993. Simpson, Catharine R.

Introduction. Benstock 1 - 6. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1929. New York: Harvest-Harcourt, 1989. Zwerdling, Alex.

Virginia Woolf and the Real World. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1986.


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Research essay sample on Room Of One Men And Women

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