TY BCOM SEM 6 Short notes
Chapter
1: Professions for women
1. Novelist's
Chief Desire
Speech of “Professions for Women” was given
in 1931 to the Women’s Service League by Virginia Woolf. It was also included
in Death of a Moth and Other Essays in 1942. Woolf’s main point in this essay
was to bring awareness to the phantoms and obstacles women face in their jobs.
Virginia Woolf’s ‘Professions for Women’
originally presented as a paper to the Women’s Service League dwells on Woolf’s
own professional experiences of female sensibility. Although she is speaking
primarily of her own experiences, she feels that women in all professions face
the same kind of difficulties and those women starting new courses face greater
obstacles than the rest. Here Woolf shows how it is difficult for women to come
out of the age-old-prejudices that prevail in the society and also within women
themselves.
Woolf shares a strange experience in
writing novels. She feels that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as
unconscious as possible. She has to induce in herself a state of continuous
lethargy so that nothing breaks or disturbs the illusion in which she is
living. Woolf imagines herself to be a girl sitting with a pen in her hand for
minutes and for hours without dipping it in the inkpot. The image that came to
her mind was the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams by the side of a
deep lake with a rod held out over the water. She let her imagination sweep
unchecked. The line raced through her fingers. Her imagination had rushed away
until it dashed against something hard. She was roused from her dream. She was
indeed in a state of the most acute and difficult distress. She had thought of
something about the body, about the passions which she found it difficult to
express as she thought, men would be shocked. She could write no more. The
trance was over and her imagination could work no longer. She felt that women
writers were obstructed by the extreme conventionality of other sex. Woolf
acknowledges that some progress has been made in the field of economic
independence but a lot more has to be done before women become truly free in
every sense of the word. For example, women still have to define their true
selves but this is not possible unless they are allowed to participate in all
arts and professions. So she calls for collective action to end discrimination,
break away from stereotypes and achieve true freedom.
2.Overcoming
the Angel in the House
Virginia Woolf’s ‘Professions for Women’
originally presented as a paper to the Women’s Service League dwells on Woolf’s
own professional experiences of female sensibility. Although she is speaking
primarily of her own experiences, she feels that women in all professions face
the same kind of difficulties and those women starting new courses face greater
obstacles than the rest. Here Woolf shows how it is difficult for women to come
out of the age-old-prejudices that prevail in the society and also within women
themselves.
THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE. The popular
Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be "the Angel in the
House"; she was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The
Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic,
self-sacrificing, pious, and above all--pure.
While writing the review she discovers
that if she were going to review books she has to fight with a certain phantom.
Many of the actual barriers preventing women from becoming successful
professionals had been removed by the time Woolf was making her speech but she stresses
that there are important invisible and internalized obstacles which still need
to be surmounted. And the phantom is a woman whom she calls ‘The Angel In The
House’ stands for womanly perfection of the so called good nurtured social
identity. Whenever she begins to write ‘The Angel in The House’ comes between
her and her paper. In desperation she kills ‘The Angel In The House’. She feels
that it is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. By and by she rids
herself of ‘The Angel In The House’. Being a professional writer Woolf goes
beyond the limits allotted to women. She cannot remain nice and modest. She has
to be bold, forthright and open in her descriptions and criticism.
3.The message to women in
this speech
Virginia Woolf’s ‘Professions for Women’
originally presented as a paper to the Women’s Service League dwells on Woolf’s
own professional experiences of female sensibility. Although she is speaking
primarily of her own experiences, she feels that women in all professions face
the same kind of difficulties and those women starting new courses face greater
obstacles than the rest. Here Woolf shows how it is difficult for women to come
out of the age-old-prejudices that prevail in the society and also within women
themselves.
Virginia Woolf thus acquired two
experiences in her professional life. The first, killing the Angel in the House
and the second, telling truth about her own experience as a body. She had been
successful in solving the first problem by killing the Angel in the House. But
she does not think that he had solved the second one. She also doubts that any
woman has solved it yet. The obstacles against her are still very formidable
and yet they are very difficult to define outwardly, what is simpler than to,
write stories and what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man?
Inwardly the case is different. She has still many ghosts to fight and many
obstacles to overcome.
Virginia Woolf next says that if there are so
many impediments in literature, the freest of all professions for women then
there are more obstacles for women who, for the first time, enter in the new
professions. Virginia Woolf desires to
discuss all these things because women in other professions too have the same
obstacles, though in different forms. To discuss and define them, Mrs. Woolf
says is of great value and importance; for in this way the labour can be shared
and difficulties be solved. She also thinks that the ends and aims for which
they are fighting should be continually discussed, questioned and examined to
ensure greater freedom for women.
The essay presents the case for women’s
freedom from economic slavery. She makes a strong appeal for women’s liberation
from conventional shackles. In the late Victorian and early twentieth century
women had no economic independence. They were not still free to speak, to write
and to think in the way they liked. They were impeded by man-made standards of
womanly conduct Virginia Woolf makes a strong but bold appeal for women’s
freedom from conventional shackles. No creative work can be done in such conditions.
She calls upon women to break the idol of womanly perfection which she
describes as the woman in the house after the title of a long poem written by
Coventry Patmore. She lays stress on intellectual freedom and artistic
integrity. She emphasizes the importance of economic independence by citing her
own example. Unless women earn their own money, they will not be able to take
their own decisions or shape their own lives. But while striving for economic
independence women have to contend with non-economic factors as well.
The
two major obstacles that all women, including women authors, face are the
conventional notion of the role and function of women and the taboo regarding
the expression of their sexuality. The idealized woman of the late Victorian
age and the early twentieth century was the soft, tender, self-sacrificing
domestic drudge who always catered to the needs of the men and joyfully
accepted her own servility. Moreover, women were not expected to speak of or
acknowledge their physical needs and desires, as this was considered highly
brazen and unwomanly. Sexuality—its expression and gratification—was considered
to be the exclusive domain of men as though women were completely asexual
beings. Woolf urges women belonging to every profession to combat these
negative stereotypes and conceptions, both externally and internally, and
emerge as positive, independent individuals. While the women’s voices uttering
the plights have different names, scenes, and histories, the similar language
of their plights often seems more like different aspects of the same
consciousness, perhaps representing the various aspects of womenfolk as a
whole.
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