Woolf's Realistic Feminism

Today I read Virginia Woolf's speech, "Shakespeare's Sister," in which she first articulated the "Room of One's Own" formula for the success of a female writer. There is one unusual thing about her views on feminism, which is less their content than their combination: she believes both that women have been systematically disadvantaged in a way that precluded their earlier success in writing, and that they have failed to grasp the modern opportunities to remedy that historical repression. She says, in unequivocal terms, that women have done nothing of historic value.

As it turns out, these views are very similar to my own. I have always been angered by the hump that women must climb before they can succeed like men. It is not an insurmountable slope, but one that ensures only the cream of the crop are recognized. Yet at the same time, I have always repudiated the whining of women who sit at a political or literary discussion and clean their nails or otherwise primp, who "trust that there is always an arm to cling to," as Woolf would say.

I felt like I had been hit by a cold iron when the summarizing article from The Guardian (always printed at the end in this speech series) raised the objectivity of Woolf. My blood raged when he noted that men have also suffered from financial hardship in history, but have overcome it. It seemed very clear to me that this was motivated by a misogynist attempt to discredit Woolf. (He disdainfully concludes his article with an assessment that Woolf always, despite errors in logic, "maintains an unfaltering poise.")

However, the reviewer does have a point about the emotion with which she speaks. Indeed, women have not done poorly solely because of the material constraints that they faced: they seem, by their very nature, to have scuttled away from the limelight and retreated at the slightest sign of resistance. Indeed, men in 1928 could proudly say that they had done much to advance the cause of women - including granting them the vote less than a decade earlier (and the worries of minorities who seem to be progressing but still aspire to parity is often dismissed as whining at the expense of more pressing problems).

The reviewer's overlooked point is that this is the female second nature - the one shoved at them by society. It is not in the first nature of a woman to primp during an intellectual discussion. But a man would be scorned for doing so, while a woman would only be discouraged with a condescending smile and sigh; and women have been taught to appreciate the condescending smile of their male guardians.

But even a socially imposed disadvantage can only be stretched so far into martyrdom. For one fearful moment, I worried that even moderate feminists like Woolf, who empowered women to act rather than whining, were on par with the crazed and single-minded head of PETA. Since we cannot hope to think entirely outside our own experience, we may victimize ourselves more than is fair - and, going below the PETA level, we may do so as an excuse not to act. Primping girls may take the condescending smile as a reassurance that they need not struggle to grasp the meaning of the discussion in order to please.

Yet the reviewer conveniently ignored that Woolf herself acknowledges the passivity of women and urges them to action in a stirring peroration.

But, even if more could be said to supplement Woolf's analysis, I do think that civil conventions demand tolerating some exaggeration (though that is not quite the issue here) and some single-minded "framing" of one's subject in a public speech. The author of this article violated that convention.

[Perhaps I should note, I'm listening to Frank Sinatra right now - which just maddens a woman already in a feminist frame of mind.]