Virginia Woolf, the Feminist Movement, and the Question of Women

1. “In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female… The androgynous mind is resonant and porous… naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf, the Feminist Movement, and the Question of Women

2. Lecture Outline • Brief History of the Feminist Movement(s) • Virginia Woolf’s Life • A Room of One’s Own

3. A Room of One’s Own p.46-47 it wouldhavebeenimpossible, completelyandentirely, foranywomantohavewrittentheplays of Shakespeare in theage of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since factsareso hard tocomeby, whatwouldhavehappened had Shakespeare had a wonderfullygiftedsister, calledJudith, let us say. Shakespeare himselfwent, veryprobably--his motherwas an heiress--tothegrammarschool (…). He had, it seemed, a tasteforthetheatre; (...)Verysoon he gotwork in thetheatre, became a successfulactor, andlived at thehub of theuniverse, meetingeverybody, knowingeverybody, practising his art on theboards, exercising his wits in thestreets, andevengettingaccesstothepalace of thequeen.

4. A Room of One’s Own p.46-47 Theforce of her owngiftalonedrove her to it. Shemadeup a smallparcel of her belongings, letherselfdownby a ropeonesummer'snightandtooktheroadtoLondon. Shewas not seventeen. Thebirdsthatsang in thehedgewere not moremusicalthanshewas. She had thequickestfancy, a giftlike her brother's, forthetune of words. Likehim, she had a tastefortheatre. Shestood at thestagedoor; shewantedtoact, shesaid. Men laughed in her face. Themanager--a fat, loose-lippedman--guffawed. He bellowedsomethingaboutpoodlesdancingandwomenacting--nowoman, he said, couldpossibly be an actress. He hinted--you can imaginewhat. Shecouldgetnotraining in her craft. Couldsheevenseek her dinner in a tavernorroamthestreets at midnight? (...) at lastNickGreenetheactor-managertookpity on her; shefoundherselfwithchildbythatgentlemanandso--whoshallmeasuretheheatandviolence of thepoet'sheartwhencaughtandtangled in a woman's body?--killedherselfonewinter'snightandliesburied at somecross-roadswheretheomnibusesnow stop outsidetheElephantandCastle.

5. Portia in The Merchant of Venice

6. Who is Shakespeare’s Sister?

7. Christine de Pisan1364-1430 TheBookof the City of Ladies

8. First Wave Feminism • 18thcentury Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges • 19th-20th Century Movement in Europe and the United States Main Concerns: • Voting rights • Employment • Marriage laws (and property rights) • Child custody

9. First Wave Feminism in the US 1848-1960s • Convention at Seneca Falls, New York 1848 gained right to vote 1920 birth control • Elizabeth Cady Stanton- Declaration of Sentiments • Social, Civil, Political Rights for women • Susan Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone advocated women’s rights

10. Feminists and Suffrage • First Wave Feminists didn’t call themselves feminists yet (not until 1895) • Excluded from politics, public education • bourgeois women’s movement objected to the class struggle • Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) led the British suffrage movement by harsh, militant protest

11. First Wave in Britain First women in higher education in Britain Married women’s property rights 1870 Higher education for women 1868 Improved child custody rights But not yet the VOTE!

12. Voting Women • Germany 1918 • America 1920 • Great Britain 1928 • Turkey 1934 • France 1945

13. Birth Control USA and UK • Margaret Sanger (public health nurse) birth control movement 1919 • 1936 Supreme Court declassified distribution of birth control as crime • 1965 legal use of contraceptives by married couples in US • 1973 Abortion legalized in all states • 1974 Birth control free in the UK • By 1900 sexuality and reproduction were openly connected to women’s rights

14. Second Wave Feminism late 1960s-1970s Civil Rights and anti-war movements birth control and abortion Criticism of sexism and patriarchic system Social, political, economic equal rights for women Sexual liberation

15. Second Wave

16. Third Wave Feminism 1980s-90s Criticism of Second Wave as answering to needs of upper-middle class white women Speaking for Black, Hispanic, developing-countries’ feminists Feminism became ideological and also academic Queer theory, cultural studies, gender violence..

17. Marxist Feminism Clara Zetkin Rosa Luxemburg Alexandra Kollontai

18. The Stephen Family in 1894

20. Bloomsbury Years

21. Poster for the first Post-Impressionist exhibition, London, 1910

22. A Room of One’s Own Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only Fellows and Scholars are allowed here;the gravel is the place for me. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in the protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession, theyhad sent my little fish into hiding…

23. A Room of One’s Own When, however, one reads of a witchbeing ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without singing them, was often a woman.