Essay-Women's condition nowadays with reference to A room of one's own by Virginia Woolf

 

For all these centuries women have played the role of mirrors, endowed with the magical and delicious property of reflecting the figure of the man double-sized of the natural

 

These were the words written by Virginia Woolf in A room of one’s own  and these are still the words that echo in the mind of those who observe rationally the society in which we are.

After years of struggle, women have partly managed to emancipate ourselves, but the path is still long because we must eradicate those habits and traditions based on a patriarchal conception of society. For centuries women have been forced to be mothers, wives, educators, without ever having had the chance to build upthemselves and without ever having had the chance to rise as they wanted.

The woman has always been presented from the male point of view, starting from the thirteenth century with Dante Alighieri up to quote more modern authors such as James Joyce and his Eveline.

But why did that happen? Why did no woman ever find the courage to describe the world from her point of view before Charlotte Brönte or Jane Austen? Why so few women writers in the history of literature in the various countries of the world?

The answers to these questions are many, but Virginia Woolf was the one who gave a brilliant explanation to all these questions in an extraordinary work A Room of one’s own, which had a great impact on the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s of the 19th century.

 

Nowadays women have the opportunity to study, the opportunity to vote, to work where they want and above all they are independent, but did women have the same opportunities as men in the past centuries? Obviously the answer is no, they didn’t. In most societies women and men have always faced different expectations about how they should behave or work. Women have been expected to play specific roles- the wife, the mother, the daughter, the housewife; they have not been considered to be fit to do jobs generally associated with men, or even to start a career in politics, to do scientific research or do the same sports as men.

During the Victorian Age, for example, in England, the ideal Victorian woman was the “angel in the house”; her place was in the home, she was the pious, respectable and busy wife, mother and daughter. Victorian women didn’t have the same rights as men: they could not vote or hold political office, they had limited education and limited employment opportunities.

Men could divorce their wives for adultery, but wives could do so only if adultery was combined cruelty, bigamy or incest.

General attitudes to sex were a crucial aspect of respectability, with an intense concern of female chastity, and single women with a child were marginalized as “fallen women”.

Fortunately, the condition of the woman has changed over time.

Over the years, indeed, there have been many women who have fought for their emancipation; we can remember, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley’s mother, who is considered one of the forerunners of the feminist movement. She campaigned for a more active role for women in society.  In her opinion, if women were treated as subordinate beings and they often accepted this state of oppression, it was because they didn't have the tools to avenge their fundamental rights. In particular, she saw education as the key for promoting better living and social conditions for women.

In the late 19th century women struggled hard to improve their condition, but the early 20th century was an era of emancipation.

Emmeline Pankhurst is the icon of the feminist movement of the 20th century, she was a British activist and politician who led The Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United Kingdom, helping women gain the right to vote: the suffragettes broke windows, cut telephone wires, even went to prison. In 1918 they gained the vote for women over 30, but only in 1928 the age limitation became 21, the same as that for men.

 

Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own. 

In 1929, Virginia Woolf published A Room’s Of One’s Own, which is a brilliant feminist essay, where the modern novelist explored the material and psychological conditions and historical constraints encountered by women writers. In this essay, Woolf advanced the thesis that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”, in other words, she says that women must be independent.

Here, the room is associated with economic independence, not just a space in which to write. Women must own enough money, if they want to completely devote themselves to write books.

To make people understand the importance of women's independence, Woolf creates Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary sister of the great dramatist William Shakespeare, she’s the example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met.

This is the way she figures out her possible story in one section of the essay.

Judith was beaten by her father, she hated the idea of marriage and one night she decided to run away to pursue her dream: She wanted to enter the world of art and literature, because she possessed fantasy and was good with the musicality of words.

She was not accepted into theatres, no one taught her to act, she could not eat in taverns and she could not wander the streets of London at midnight alone. The men abused her, became pregnant and eventually decided to commit suicide. She was abandoned by everyone and no one would ever remember her.

“She lives in you and in me,” said Woolf, talking about Judith “and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed.”

Moreover, according to Virginia Woolf, women had to revolutionize the world of literature, they had to create a new narrative genre in which they could express reality through their eyes with an innovative language, as Jane Austen did with the novel, this is because women have always seen the world from a different perspective and need a new literary tradition.

Woolf closes the essay with an exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition that has been so hardly bequeathed to them, and to increase the endowment for their own daughters.

 

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. Sustainable development goal 5 is related to the importance of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. There has been progress over the last decades: more girls are going to school, fewer girls are forced into early marriage, more women are serving in parliament and positions of leadership, and laws are being reformed to advance gender equality.

 

In many countries in the world, gender equality has been achieved and today there are many women writers such as JK Rowling or Isabel Allende, or  in addition to the world of literature, women have also been welcomed in politics or in some other fields. In Italy, for example, the Prime Minister is currently a woman Giorgia Meloni.

However, despite these gains, many challenges remain: discriminatory laws and social norms remain pervasive, women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership, and women and girls all over the world report experiencing physical or sexual violence.

 

There are also countries where women are still exploited, beaten and killed, where between sixty and eighty percent of marriages are forced and violence, especially sexual violence, is the order of the day and lots of women cannot read or write.

The coronavirus outbreak has increased existing inequalities for women and girls across every sphere – from health and the economy, to security and social protection. 

 In conclusion, I think that women must fight every day as opportunities and expectations are still different for women and violence against them has even intensified. That is made clear if we consider all the movements and organizations  helping and supporting women in all parts of the world, such as the Me Too or NonUnaDiMeno movement.

We are a long way from real equality.

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good government. -Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN.