Williams and Woolf: Two Views of Feminism
Virginia Woolf and Patricia Williams, though writing with more than six decades apart, tackle strikingly similar issues affecting women--especially professional women--in their respective times and worlds. The details of the inequalities they experience and the solutions they suggest or imply to remedy these inequalities are quite different in some instances, however, as are the methods they employ to present the situations and solutions to the reader. Both logically build a case first to show that there is without question a gender bias, and then to examine this causes and possible remedies. But while Virginia Woof takes a broad political view of the situation, augmented by specific examples from history and close readings of texts with female authors, Williams approach is more personal. Through anecdotes and imagery, Williams makes the struggle a more personal and individually relevant struggle. Woolf's logic is possibly superior but her delivery is drier and more academically stiff. The main reason for the differences of these styles could well be the audiences these two women we
When it comes to gender bias, Woolf explains and Williams illustrates. Virginia Woolf's book-length essay, A Room of One's Own, grew out of two papers she read to assemblies of upper-class, well-educated people in her native Great Britain. Both are effective and necessary modes of communicating their points to the reader. When she had her breakdown, society managed to condemn her for failing at successfully maintaining either gender. Without the socio-economic freedom to express herself in writing as she sees fit, no woman will ever be able to produce true "female" fiction. In her time, women were still not allowed in many academic institutions and even libraries often had gender-based restrictions. This touches on the same type of dependency that Woolf discussed explicitly; Judge Thomas' situation was, if anything, even more fraught with complications however. As long as she is dependent--especially on a male-dominated society--her potential cannot be realized. This is why Woolf focuses on the broad political problems of the gender division in society, claiming that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved" (Woolf, par. ; her audience is also more a mix of class, race, and economic position She focuses on anecdotes to reveal the same type of pressure society places on women. Williams has a much more personal approach to the same issue. She was expected to be able to hold a job--a job with a lot of authority that required unemotional logic, both traditionally "male" traits--as well as maintain a home life and her own identity as a woman, somehow balancing the "masculinity" of her work and the "femininity" of her gender. Rather than taking the broad political view, she cites specific examples, such as Judge Maxine Thomas, who had a nervous breakdown and was accused of all sorts of contradictions by the media, basically to the effect that she was either too much man or not enough woman to have doe her job and maintained her femininity (Williams, 193). Williams uses her story to make a personal connection with an audience looking more for the "heart" of the issue than Woolf's was. By focusing her argument I such obviously researched and academic tones, Woolf is appealing to the tastes and demands of her upper-class audience, who would not take an "unscientific" approach such as Williams' as seriously.
Common topics in this essay:
Women Fiction,
Judge Thomas',
Virginia Woof,
Patricia Williams,
Maxine Thomas,
One's Own,
Virginia Woolf's,
gender bias,
broad political,
specific examples,
true nature,
broad political view,
political view,
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Acceptance Essays
