Kennedy Radix

A.P. English Language and Composition

Class 2B
Two Dinners Rhetorical Analysis Final Copy
Within the two different narrative passages regarding two meals addressed to a
gender-segregated society, Virginia Woolf bitterly recounts her experience at a luncheon
at a mens college which contrasts with her disappointment of a dinner at the womens
in order to prove, respectively, that she lives in a world where discrimination by sex is
invariably memorable (I-2) and that it is time to eliminate such social norms and stand
up to demand change.
Woolf symbolizes the meal at each college in a way that depicts the widening
chasm between the lifestyles and education of men and women. In passage I, Woolf
uses a variety of polysyllabic words such as partridges [a] retinue of sauces and
salads (I-15&16) in order to convey the sickening succulence that men were allowed to
indulge in. Retinue (I-16) implies such a variety of food in the hall and Woolfs attitude
was clearly visible. She feels in awe of such luxury that she is able to bask, however,
Woolf wishes to do so with her fellow women. Furthermore, it can be implied that
although Woolf would prefer the company of other women, she does enjoy the food and
the atmosphere of the mens dining hall, which adds to her anger and animosity more
that women are not afforded the same opportunity as men in something as simple as
food. The meal in passage II, though, was a completely different ball game. Woolfs
disappointment with her dinner at the womens college was all too apparent. She
employs blunt monosyllabic phrases in the description. The simple sentences, for

example, It was a plain gravy soup (II-4&5), in passage II conveys the simplicity and
boring nature of the meal itself. The food symbolizes the discrimination by gender by
proving how women were spared just enough, of everything not just food, to get by in
contrast to their male counterparts, who got swim in their luxury. Woolf demonstrates
this in the way she structures the two passages. She utilizes various image-evoking
phrases in passage I, but in passage II, the reader gets just enough imagery to see that
the meal with the women was sorely disappointing, which again, goes to show the
disgusting discrimination of the sexes in the Victorian era.
Because Virginia Woolf found within herself the courage to write about
unacceptable social practices, a movement to inflict change was inspire. Woolfs
writings about the discrimination between men and women in such trivial things as food
proved the ridiculousness of inequality between the sexes. Without such brave people
in society, like Virginia Woolf, the world be stuck in its ways and would continue to
practice unfair and, frankly, rude habits.