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The Exclusion of Working-Class Women in Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own

In Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own the narrator clearly expresses her rage and resentment exposing the absence and exclusion of women through history and she also focuses on the unfair position of women in her contemporary society. The narrator encourages women to emancipate themselves and to be aware of the idiosyncratic nature of society that restricts them to the private sphere. The aim of this paper is to offer a different interpretation of A Room of One’s Own and demonstrate how Woolf excludes contemporary working-class women from partaking in her feminist message. In order to demonstrate the exclusion of working-class women three major perspectives have been integrated throughout the text: readings of A Room of One’s Own, a historical aspect including classism, and the significance of Woolf’s biographical background. My analysis highlights Woolf’s unintentional class bias, her ladylike manner, and the centrality of financial independence in A Room of One’s Own and displays how these features entail the exclusion of working-class women. The conclusion demonstrates that the amalgamation of the three perspectives mentioned above provides a nuanced and critical reading of A Room of One’s Own.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-7462
Date January 2011
CreatorsJayakrishna, Louise
PublisherKarlstads universitet, Estetisk-filosofiska fakulteten
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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