Verified Document

Meno & Phaedo What It Essay

An excellent example of a key component in the sexual identity of a woman is the compulsion to get married which most women (particularly during Woolf's day) are bound to experience. Orlando feels this sentiment as well, which the following quotation demonstrates. Everyone is mated except myself,' she mused, as she trailed disconsolately across the courtyard… I, 'am single, am mateless, am alone.' Such thoughts had never entered her head before. Now they bore her down unescapably (Orlando 1928).

It is noteworthy to mention that this passage precedes Orlando's relationship with Shel. Yet it is highly indicative of the sort of responsibility that most women feel -- that at some point in their lives they are obligated to get married to someone. The weight of these thoughts leads Orlando to feel "disconsolately" and "unescapably" burdened by them. This is one particular instance in which Woolf is actually demonstrating a similarity between the sexes that is underscored by the androgynous nature of Orlando. This passage implies that anyone can feel the negative effects of being a woman, if they were actually put in the same predicament that many women find themselves in. But as Woolf spends the vast majority of "A Room of One's Own" arguing, such predicaments are largely constructed by society and people are able to supersede them by incorporating elements of androgyny, which Orlando does in Orlando: A Biography.

Woolf is able to use various notions of androgyny to provide solutions to many of the effects of both...

By incorporating both traditional male and female characteristics, Woolf suggests through "A Room of One's Own" and through Orlando: A Biography that people can find true happiness and fulfillment in their lives. In the latter work, she illustrates how men and women are not so dissimilar, especially when they face the same sort of circumstances. What both of these literary works actually share in common, however, is the notion that androgyny engenders a flexibility and fluctuation in one's identity and sexuality that can benefit a person's felicity and creativity. This latter aspect is alluded to by the fact that it is only after Orlando has experienced life as both a man and a woman that she finished her poem, "the Oak Tree," to critical acclaim.
References

Bimberg, C 2002, 'The Poetics of Conversation in Virginia Woolf's a Room of One's Own: Constructed Arbitrariness and Thoughtful Impressionism', Connotations, Vol 11, no 1.

Fernald, a 1994, 'A Room of One's Own, Personal Criticism, and the Essay', Twentieth Century Literature, Vol 40, no 2, p. 165-189.

No author 2012, 'A Room of One's Own', Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509229/a-Room-of-Ones-Own

Wolf, V 1928, Orlando: A Biography, ebooks@Adelaide. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91o/chapter5.html

Wolf, V 1929, a Room of One's Own, ebooks@Adelaid. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/

Sources used in this document:
References

Bimberg, C 2002, 'The Poetics of Conversation in Virginia Woolf's a Room of One's Own: Constructed Arbitrariness and Thoughtful Impressionism', Connotations, Vol 11, no 1.

Fernald, a 1994, 'A Room of One's Own, Personal Criticism, and the Essay', Twentieth Century Literature, Vol 40, no 2, p. 165-189.

No author 2012, 'A Room of One's Own', Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509229/a-Room-of-Ones-Own

Wolf, V 1928, Orlando: A Biography, ebooks@Adelaide. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91o/chapter5.html
Wolf, V 1929, a Room of One's Own, ebooks@Adelaid. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Virginia Woolf's View of Women
Words: 6146 Length: 19 Document Type: Research Paper

It would take an entire paper just to explicate all of the roles that women play today and how society has changed as a result. The point is that it has changed and that women play a much different role in literature today than they did even just a century ago during Woolf's time. Woolf saw just a glimpse into the social turn that has led to the present

Virginia Woolf and to the Lighthouse
Words: 3364 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

Virginia Wolf and "To the Lighthouse" Biographical Information Virginia Woolf is noted as one of the most influential female novelists of the twentieth century. She is often correlated to the American writer Willa Cather not because they were raised similarly or for any other reason than the style of their writing and their early feminist approach to the craft. Woolf, unlike Cather, was born to privilege, and was "ideally situated to appreciate

Virginia Woolf's "The Death of the Moth"
Words: 1777 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Mr. Forster, it seems, has a strong impulse to belong to both camps at once. He has many of the instincts and aptitudes of the pure artist (to adopt the old classification) -- an exquisite prose style, an acute sense of comedy, a power of creating characters in a few strokes which live in an atmosphere of their own; but he is at the same time highly conscious of

Virginia Woolf's "A Room of Her Own":
Words: 3432 Length: 10 Document Type: Dissertation or Thesis complete

Virginia Woolf's "A Room of Her Own": War, Independence, and Identity "[a]s a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world" -Virginia Woolf The Chinese character for "crisis" is a combination of the words "danger" and "opportunity." It is often the case that when people are faced with hardship, they experience inward, mental, changes as a coping strategy to

Virginia Woolf to the Light House
Words: 3556 Length: 8 Document Type: Term Paper

Virginia Woolf to the Light House Biography of the author Virginia Woolf, the British author who made efforts towards making an original contribution to the structure of the novel, was an eminent writer of feminist essays, a critic writer in The Times Lierary Supplement and the prominent person in the Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf was born as the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Jackson Duckworth in London. Her father, Sir

Virginia Woolf's Final Novel -- and George
Words: 1878 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Virginia Woolf's Final Novel -- and George Orwell Virginia Woolf's novel, Between The Acts was her final published work, and it would be reasonable for a reader who knows how she chose to end her life (by drowning herself in the River Ouse on March 28, 1941), to suspect that she committed suicide in part because she was in great despair over the frightening possibility of the Nazis being successful in

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now