CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

PROJECT

LAW AND LITERATURE

TOPIC

“VIRGINIA WOOLF AND FEMINISM”

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Dr. Pratyush Kaushik Gaurav Kumar Singh

(Faculty of Law and Literature) 2nd Semester

B.B.A L.LB

Roll No. – 1621

Session- 2016-2021

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 DECLARATION BY THE CANDIDATE

I hereby declare that the work reported in the BB.A. LL.B (Hons.) Project Report
entitled “VIRGINIA WOOLF AND FEMINISM” submitted at Chanakya National
Law University, Patna is an authentic record of my work carried out under the
supervision of Dr. Pratyush Kaushik. I have not submitted this work elsewhere for any
other degree or diploma. I am fully responsible for the contents of my Project Report.

(Signature of the Candidate)

GAURAV KUMAR SINGH

Chanakya National Law University, Patna

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

“ IF YOU WANT TO WALK FAST GO ALONE

IF YOU WANT TO WALK FAR GO TOGETHER”

A project is a joint endeavour which is to be accomplished with utmost compassion,

diligence and with support of all. Gratitude is a noble response of one’s soul to
kindness or help generously rendered by another and its acknowledgement is the duty
and joyance. I am overwhelmed in all humbleness and gratefulness to acknowledge
from the bottom of my heart to all those who have helped me to put these ideas, well
above the level of simplicity and into something concrete effectively and moreover on
time. This project would not have been completed without combined effort of my
revered Law and Literature teacher Dr. PRATYUSH KAUSHIK whose support and
guidance was the driving force to successfully complete this project. I express my
heartfelt gratitude to him. Thanks are also due to my parents, family, siblings, my dear
friends and all those who helped me in this project in any way. Last but not the least; I
would like to express my sincere gratitude to our Law and Literature teacher for
providing us with such a golden opportunity to showcase our talents. Also this project
was instrumental in making me know more about Virginia Woolf and feminism. This
project played an important role in making me understand more about the various
aspects of feminism. It was truly an endeavour which enabled me to embark on a
journey which redefined my intelligentsia, induced my mind to discover the intricacies
involved in Virginia Woolf and feminism.

Moreover, thanks to all those who helped me in any way be it words, presence,

Encouragement or blessings...

-Gaurav Kumar Singh

- 2nd Semester

- B.BA LL.B

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgement………..……………………………………………………………………3

Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………...4

Research Objectives…………………………………………………………………………...5

Hypothesis……………………………………………………………………………………..5

Research Methodology………………………………………………………………………..5

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………...6-11

2. Virginia Woolf: Women & Gender………………………………………………12-13

3. Attitude towards Judaism, Christianity and Fascism………………………………...14

4. Quotes About Feminism……………………………………………………………...15

5. Mrs. Dalloway…………………………………………………………………….16-17

6. To The Lighthouse………………………………………………………………..18-19

7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..20-21

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………22

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 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The researcher aims to find out:

 About Virginia Woolf

 Life of Virginia Woolf
 Writing Style of Virginia Woolf

HYPOTHESIS

According to the researcher Virginia Woolf was a novelist, essayist, biographer and
feminist whose work was appreciated by everyone. She is best known for her novels,
especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927).

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

For this study, primary research method was utilised. Various articles, e-articles,
reports and books from library were used extensively in framing all the data and
figures in appropriate form, essential for this study.

The method used in writing this research is primarily analytical.

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 INTRODUCTION

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Before the Second World War and long before the second wave of feminism, Virginia
Woolf argued that women's experience, particularly in the women's movement, could
be the basis for transformative social change. Grounding Virginia Woolf's feminist
beliefs in the everyday world, Naomi Black reclaims Three Guineas as a major
feminist document. Rather than a book only about war, Black considers it to be the
best, clearest presentation of Woolf's feminism.

Woolf's changing representation of feminism in publications from 1920 to 1940

parallels her involvement with the contemporary women's movement (suffragism and
its descendants, and the pacifist, working-class Women's Co-operative Guild). Black
guides us through Woolf's feminist connections and writings, including her public
letters from the 1920s as well as "A Society," A Room of One's Own, and the
introductory letter to Life as We Have Known It. She assesses the lengthy
development of Three Guineas from a 1931 lecture and the way in which the form and
illustrations of the book serve as a feminist subversion of male scholarship. Virginia
Woolf as Feminist concludes with a discussion of the continuing relevance of Woolf's
feminism for third-millennium politics.

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Born on January 25, 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen was raised in a remarkable
household. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, was a historian and author, as well as one of
the most prominent figures in the golden age of mountaineering. Woolf’s mother,
Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson), had been born in India and later served as a
model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters. She was also a nurse and wrote a book on
the profession. Both of her parents had been married and widowed before marrying
each other. Woolf had three full siblings — Thoby, Vanessa and Adrian — and four
half-siblings — Laura Makepeace Stephen and George, Gerald and Stella
Duckworth. The eight children lived under one roof at 22 Hyde Park Gate,
Kensington.

Two of Woolf’s brothers had been educated at Cambridge, but all the girls were
taught at home and utilized the splendid confines of the family’s lush Victorian
library. Moreover, Woolf’s parents were extremely well connected, both socially and
artistically. Her father was a friend to William Thackeray, the father of his first wife
who died unexpectedly, and George Henry Lewes, as well as many other noted
thinkers. Her mother’s aunt was the famous 19th century photographer Julia Margaret
Cameron.1

From the time of her birth until 1895, Woolf spent her summers in St. Ives, a beach
town at the very southwestern tip of England. The Stephens’ summer home, Talland
House, which is still standing today, looks out at the dramatic Porthminster Bay and
has a view of the Godrevy Lighthouse, which inspired her writing. In her later
memoirs, Woolf recalled St. Ives with a great fondness. In fact, she incorporated
scenes from those early summers into her modernist novel, To the Lighthouse (1927).

As a young girl, Virginia was curious, light-hearted and playful. She started a family
newspaper, the Hyde Park Gate News, to document her family’s humorous anecdotes.
However, early traumas darkened her childhood, including being sexual abused by
her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth, which she wrote about in her
essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate. In 1895, at the age of 13, she also

1
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf

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had to cope with the sudden death of her mother from rheumatic fever, which led to
her first mental breakdown, and the loss of her half-sister Stella, who had become the
head of the household, two years later.

While dealing with her personal losses, Woolf continued her studies in German, Greek
and Latin at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London. Her four years of
study introduced her to a handful of radical feminists at the helm of educational
reforms. In 1904, her father died from stomach cancer, which contributed to another
emotional setback that led to Woolf being institutionalized for a brief period. Virginia
Woolf’s dance between literary expression and personal desolation would continue for
the rest of her life. In 1905, she began writing professionally as a contributor for The
Times Literary Supplement. A year later, Woolf's 26-year-old brother Thoby died
from typhoid fever after a family trip to Greece.

After their father's death, Woolf's sister Vanessa and brother Adrian sold the family
home in Hyde Park Gate, and purchased a house in the Bloomsbury area of London.
During this period, Virginia met several members of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle
of intellectuals and artists including the art critic Clive Bell, who married Virginia's
sister Vanessa, the novelist E.M. Forster, the painter Duncan Grant, the biographer
Lytton Strachey, economist John Maynard Keynes and essayist Leonard Woolf,
among others. The group became famous in 1910 for the Dreadnought Hoax, a
practical joke in which members of the group dressed up as a delegation of Ethiopian
royals, including Virginia disguised as a bearded man, and successfully persuaded the
English Royal Navy to show them their warship, the HMS Dreadnought. After the
outrageous act, Leonard Woolf and Virginia became closer, and eventually they were
married on August 10, 1912. The two shared a passionate love for one another for the
rest of their lives.

Several years before marrying Leonard, Virginia had begun working on her first
novel. The original title was Melymbrosia. After nine years and innumerable drafts, it
was released in 1915 as The Voyage Out. Woolf used the book to experiment with
several literary tools, including compelling and unusual narrative perspectives, dream-
states and free association prose. Two years later, the Woolfs bought a used printing

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press and established Hogarth Press, their own publishing house operated out of their
home, Hogarth House. Virginia and Leonard published some of their writing, as well
as the work of Sigmund Freud, Katharine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot.

A year after the end of World War I, the Woolfs purchased Monk's House, a cottage
in the village of Rodmell in 1919, and that same year Virginia published Night and
Day, a novel set in Edwardian England. Her third novel Jacob's Room was published
by Hogarth in 1922. Based on her brother Thoby, it was considered a significant
departure from her earlier novels with its modernist elements. That year, she met
author, poet and landscape gardener Vita Sackville-West, the wife of English diplomat
Harold Nicolson. Virginia and Vita began a friendship that developed into a romantic
affair. Although their affair eventually ended, they remained friends until Virginia
Woolf's death.

In 1925, Woolf received rave reviews for Mrs. Dalloway, her fourth novel. The
mesmerizing story interweaved interior monologues and raised issues of feminism,
mental illness and homosexuality in post-World War I England. Mrs. Dalloway was
adapted into a 1997 film, starring Vanessa Redgrave, and inspired The Hours, a 1998
novel by Michael Cunningham and a 2002 film adaptation. Her 1928 novel, To the
Lighthouse, was another critical success and considered revolutionary for its stream of
consciousness storytelling.The modernist classic examines the subtext of human
relationships through the lives of the Ramsay family as they vacation on the Isle of
Skye in Scotland.

Woolf found a literary muse in Sackville-West, the inspiration for Woolf's 1928
novel Orlando, which follows an English nobleman who mysteriously becomes a
woman at the age of 30 and lives on for over three centuries of English history. The
novel was a breakthrough for Woolf who received critical praise for the
groundbreaking work, as well as a newfound level of popularity.

In 1929, Woolf published A Room of One's Own, a feminist essay based on lectures
she had given at women's colleges, in which she examines women's role in literature.
In the work, she sets forth the idea that “A woman must have money and a room of

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her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf pushed narrative boundaries in her next
work, The Waves (1931), which she described as "a play-poem" written in the voices
of six different characters. Woolf published The Years, the final novel published in her
lifetime in 1937, about a family's history over the course of a generation. The
following year she published Three Guineas, an essay which continued the feminist
themes of A Room of One's Own and addressed fascism and war.

Throughout her career, Woolf spoke regularly at colleges and universities, penned
dramatic letters, wrote moving essays and self-published a long list of short stories.
By her mid-forties, she had established herself as an intellectual, an innovative and
influential writer and pioneering feminist. Her ability to balance dream-like scenes
with deeply tense plot lines earned her incredible respect from peers and the public
alike. Despite her outward success, she continued to regularly suffer from debilitating
bouts of depression and dramatic mood swings.2

Virginia Woolf suffered from Bipolar II disorder. Like most authors, her characters
were an extension of herself. The euphoric experiences and incredible creativity she
possessed allowed her to create some of the greatest literature of the modern era.
However, her episodes of depression spawned her suicidal behaviour and misguided
treatment by physicians throughout her lifetime. The “rest cure” prescribed to her by
physicians cut off her ability to create and write when she needed it most. Isolating her
from society and her work had a lasting effect on how she responded to future suicidal
episodes. In her novel, Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus Smith’s decision to commit suicide
and Clarissa Dalloway’s praise of it may have reflected Virginia Woolf's personal
struggle. In my paper I will investigate and explain two main ideas. The first main
point will focus on how the character of Septimus Smith acts as an extension of
Woolf's Bipolar II disorder through his euphoric and depressive episodes throughout
the novel. Secondly, I will explain how Virginia Woolf attempts to enlighten society
about the limited and controlling nature of physicians of the modern time period.

2
http://www.biography.com/people/virginia-woolf-9536773

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Darkness settled over Virginia Woolf's life in her final years. The increasing threat of
a Second World War unnerved her. The Woolfs, like most of their friends, were
pacifists, and Three Guineas was as much an antiwar tract as a feminist one. When
Great Britain finally declared war on Germany in 1939, Virginia and Leonard Woolf
made plans to kill themselves if the Germans successfully invaded England, fearing
how the Nazis would treat a Jewish intellectual and his wife. To escape the German
bombs dropping on London, the couple moved out to Monk's House, the country
home in the village of Rodmell that they had maintained since 1919. It was a wise
choice—the Blitz destroyed their London home and Hogarth's offices.

Woolf began work on what turned out to be a final novel. Writing novels was always
mentally taxing for her, and the combined stress of her writing and the war began to
overtake her. She fell into a very deep depression. Virginia Woolf was certain that she
was not going to win this battle. On 28 March 1941, she put on her overcoat, left the
house, filled the pockets with heavy stones and walked into the house River to drown.
Her body was found three weeks later. "I feel we can't go through another of those
terrible times. And I shant recover this time. … So I am doing what seems the best
thing to do," she wrote in the suicide note Leonard Woolf found later in their home.
"If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from
me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I
dont think two people could have been happier than we have been. V."12

Virginia Woolf's final novel, Between the Acts, was published posthumously in 1941.
In the years since her death, scholars have pored over every aspect of her personal life
and career, fascinated by the Bloomsbury Group and the unique woman who was its
most famous member. Virginia Woolf's goal was not to be famous, or wealthy, or
even a great writer. Her goal was only to be herself. And on that, her fans and critics
can surely agree, she succeeded.

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 VIRGINIA WOOLF: WOMEN & GENDER

At the same time that she was experimenting with language, Woolf was also
experimenting with ideas about gender and relationships between the sexes. Like
many members of the Bloomsbury Group, the Woolf’s had an open marriage, in
which they gave each other permission to pursue outside relationships. In 1922,
Virginia met Vita Sackville-West, a poet who also had an open marriage with her
husband Harold Nicolson. The two women had a romantic relationship for several
years, and even after the affair ended they remained friends for the rest of Woolf's
life.

Woolf was interested in bisexuality—not in the modern definition of wanting to make

out with girls as well as boys, but in the more intellectual possibility of fusing both
male and female identity in a single person. Woolf was a feminist. She argued not that
women were better than men but that they were equally necessary. To her, a mind that
was able to reconcile both its masculine and feminine parts was the most creative.
"The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two [genders] live in
harmony together, spiritually co—operating. If one is a man, still the woman part of
his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in
her," Woolf wrote in A Room of One's Own. "It is when this fusion takes place that the
mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely
masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine."9 In 1928, she
explored these ideas in the novel Orlando. Spanning English history from the 1500s to
the 1900s, the book follows an eternally young man who wakes up halfway through
the book to discover that he is now a woman. The book was sort of a love letter to
Vita Sackville-West, and was illustrated with photographs of Sackville-West dressed
as Orlando.

Around the time she published Orlando, Woolf was asked to give a series of lectures
at the women's colleges at Cambridge University. She later expanded her talks about
women and art into the 1929 book A Room of One's Own. She had never forgotten the

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university education that was denied her because of her gender. "Intellectual freedom
depends upon material things," she explained. "Poetry depends upon intellectual
freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but
from the beginning of time. … Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing
poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's
own."10 In 1938 she published a second, more polemical feminist tract, Three
Guineas, in which she argued that it was necessary to boost women's education
because if there were more women in positions of power, there would be less war.

It seems fair to point out here that when Woolf wrote about the need to educate
women, she wasn't talking about all women. Modern feminism offers a bit broader of
an umbrella than the one feminists of Woolf's era used. She was openly disdainful of
working-class women, despite the fact that she relied on several such women to help
run her home. Her snobbery wasn't unusual for women of her day and upbringing, but
it definitely wasn't one of her more flattering qualities. In the story "Kew Gardens,"
the omniscient narrator notes "two elderly women of the lower middle class" and
snidely remarks on their "very complicated dialogue": "'Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa,
he says, I says, she says, I says, I says, I says." She didn't mean it in a nice way.

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ATTITUDE TOWARDS JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND FASCISM

Though happily married to a Jewish man, Woolf often wrote of Jewish characters in
stereotypical archetypes and generalisations, including describing some of her Jewish
characters as physically repulsive and dirty. She wrote in her diary: "I do not like the
Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh." In a 1930 letter to the composer Ethel
Smyth, quoted in Nigel Nicolson's biography Virginia Woolf, she recollects her boasts
of Leonard's Jewishness confirming her snobbish tendencies, "How I hated marrying a
Jew—what a snob I was, for they have immense vitality."

In another letter to Smyth, Woolf gives a scathing denunciation of Christianity, seeing

it as self-righteous "egotism" and stating "my Jew has more religion in one toe nail—
more human love, in one hair."

Woolf and her husband Leonard hated and feared 1930s fascism with its anti-
Semitism even before knowing they were on Hitler's death list for Britain. Her 1938
book Three Guineas was an indictment of fascism.3

3
http://www.gradesaver.com/women-and-writing/wikipedia/work

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 QUOTES ABOUT FEMINISM

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps

than the story of that emancipation itself.

As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.

If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to

think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can
fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to
sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even
one day.

They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that;
one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was
nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.

Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and
that is herself.4

4
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/611534

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 MRS. DALLOWAY

Mrs. Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one woman’s life. Clarissa
Dalloway, an upper-class housewife, walks through her London neighbourhood to
prepare for the party she will host that evening. When she returns from flower
shopping, an old suitor and friend, Peter Walsh, drops by her house unexpectedly. The
two have always judged each other harshly, and their meeting in the present
intertwines with their thoughts of the past. Years earlier, Clarissa refused Peter’s
marriage proposal, and Peter has never quite gotten over it. Peter asks Clarissa if she
is happy with her husband, Richard, but before she can answer, her daughter,
Elizabeth, enters the room. Peter leaves and goes to Regent’s Park. He thinks about
Clarissa’s refusal, which still obsesses him.

The point of view then shifts to Septimus, a veteran of World War I who was injured
in trench warfare and now suffers from shell shock. Septimus and his Italian wife,
Lucrezia, pass time in Regent’s Park. They are waiting for Septimus’s appointment
with Sir William Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist. Before the war, Septimus was a
budding young poet and lover of Shakespeare; when the war broke out, he enlisted
immediately for romantic patriotic reasons. He became numb to the horrors of war and
its aftermath: when his friend Evans died, he felt little sadness. Now Septimus sees
nothing of worth in the England he fought for, and he has lost the desire to preserve
either his society or himself. Suicidal, he believes his lack of feeling is a crime.
Clearly Septimus’s experiences in the war have permanently scarred him, and he has
serious mental problems. However, Sir William does not listen to what Septimus says
and diagnoses “a lack of proportion.” Sir William plans to separate Septimus from
Lucrezia and send him to a mental institution in the country.

Richard Dalloway eats lunch with Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton, members of
high society. The men help Lady Bruton write a letter to the Times, London's largest
newspaper. After lunch, Richard returns home to Clarissa with a large bunch of roses.
He intends to tell her that he loves her but finds that he cannot, because it has been so
long since he last said it. Clarissa considers the void that exists between people, even
between husband and wife. Even though she values the privacy she is able to maintain
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in her marriage, considering it vital to the success of the relationship, at the same time
she finds slightly disturbing the fact that Richard doesn’t know everything about her.
Clarissa sees off Elizabeth and her history teacher, Miss Kilman, who are going
shopping. The two older women despise one another passionately, each believing the
other to be an oppressive force over Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Septimus and Lucrezia are
in their apartment, enjoying a moment of happiness together before the men come to
take Septimus to the asylum. One of Septimus’s doctors, Dr. Holmes, arrives, and
Septimus fears the doctor will destroy his soul. In order to avoid this fate, he jumps
from a window to his death.

Peter hears the ambulance go by to pick up Septimus’s body and marvels ironically at
the level of London’s civilization. He goes to Clarissa’s party, where most of the
novel’s major characters are assembled. Clarissa works hard to make her party a
success but feels dissatisfied by her own role and acutely conscious of Peter’s critical
eye. All the partygoers, but especially Peter and Sally Seton, have, to some degree,
failed to accomplish the dreams of their youth. Though the social order is undoubtedly
changing, Elizabeth and the members of her generation will probably repeat the errors
of Clarissa’s generation. Sir William Bradshaw arrives late, and his wife explains that
one of his patients, the young veteran (Septimus), has committed suicide. Clarissa
retreats to the privacy of a small room to consider Septimus’s death. She understands
that he was overwhelmed by life and that men like Sir William make life intolerable.
She identifies with Septimus, admiring him for having taken the plunge and for not
compromising his soul. She feels, with her comfortable position as a society hostess,
responsible for his death. The party nears its close as guests begin to leave. Clarissa
enters the room, and her presence fills Peter with a great excitement.5

5
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dalloway/summary.html

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 TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

Note: To the Lighthouse is divided into three sections: “The Window,” “Time
Passes,” and “The Lighthouse.” Each section is fragmented into stream-of-
consciousness contributions from various narrators.

“The Window” opens just before the start of World War I. Mr. Ramsay and Mrs.
Ramsay bring their eight children to their summer home in the Hebrides (a group of
islands west of Scotland). Across the bay from their house stands a large lighthouse.
Six-year-old James Ramsay wants desperately to go to the lighthouse, and Mrs.
Ramsay tells him that they will go the next day if the weather permits. James reacts
gleefully, but Mr. Ramsay tells him coldly that the weather looks to be foul. James
resents his father and believes that he enjoys being cruel to James and his siblings.
The Ramsays host a number of guests, including the dour Charles Tansley, who
admires Mr. Ramsay’s work as a metaphysical philosopher. Also at the house is Lily
Briscoe, a young painter who begins a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay. Mrs. Ramsay wants
Lily to marry William Bankes, an old friend of the Ramsays, but Lily resolves to
remain single. Mrs. Ramsay does manage to arrange another marriage, however,
between Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, two of their acquaintances.
During the course of the afternoon, Paul proposes to Minta, Lily begins her painting,
Mrs. Ramsay soothes the resentful James, and Mr. Ramsay frets over his
shortcomings as a philosopher, periodically turning to Mrs. Ramsay for comfort. That
evening, the Ramsays host a seemingly ill-fated dinner party. Paul and Minta are late
returning from their walk on the beach with two of the Ramsays’ children. Lily
bristles at outspoken comments made by Charles Tansley, who suggests that women
can neither paint nor write. Mr. Ramsay reacts rudely when Augustus Carmichael, a
poet, asks for a second plate of soup. As the night draws on, however, these missteps
right themselves, and the guests come together to make a memorable evening.

The joy, however, like the party itself, cannot last, and as Mrs. Ramsay leaves her
guests in the dining room, she reflects that the event has already slipped into the past.
Later, she joins her husband in the parlor. The couple sits quietly together, until Mr.

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Ramsay’s characteristic insecurities interrupt their peace. He wants his wife to tell him
that she loves him. Mrs. Ramsay is not one to make such pronouncements, but she
concedes to his point made earlier in the day that the weather will be too rough for a
trip to the lighthouse the next day. Mr. Ramsay thus knows that Mrs. Ramsay loves
him. Night falls, and one night quickly becomes another.

Time passes more quickly as the novel enters the “Time Passes” segment. War breaks
out across Europe. Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly one night. Andrew Ramsay, her oldest
son, is killed in battle, and his sister Prue dies from an illness related to childbirth. The
family no longer vacations at its summerhouse, which falls into a state of disrepair:
weeds take over the garden and spiders nest in the house. Ten years pass before the
family returns. Mrs. McNab, the housekeeper, employs a few other women to help set
the house in order. They rescue the house from oblivion and decay, and everything is
in order when Lily Briscoe returns.

In “The Lighthouse” section, time returns to the slow detail of shifting points of view,
similar in style to “The Window.” Mr. Ramsay declares that he and James and Cam,
one of his daughters, will journey to the lighthouse. On the morning of the voyage,
delays throw him into a fit of temper. He appeals to Lily for sympathy, but, unlike
Mrs. Ramsay, she is unable to provide him with what he needs. The Ramsays set off,
and Lily takes her place on the lawn, determined to complete a painting she started but
abandoned on her last visit. James and Cam bristle at their father’s blustery behavior
and are embarrassed by his constant self-pity. Still, as the boat reaches its destination,
the children feel a fondness for him. Even James, whose skill as a sailor Mr. Ramsay
praises, experiences a moment of connection with his father, though James so
willfully resents him. Across the bay, Lily puts the finishing touch on her painting.
She makes a definitive stroke on the canvas and puts her brush down, finally having
achieved her vision.6

6
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lighthouse/summary.html

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 CONCLUSION

To sum up, we can say that the feminist ideology of Virginia Woolf was something
crucial for the development of the different feminist societies which exist today. Her
contribution to the feminist ideology was a key fact for the proliferation of what
nowadays we know as Feminism. Although Virginia Woolf was great influenced by
the social restrictions of the Victorian Period, she always felt confident about her
beliefs and thoughts. She founded the Bloomsbury Group along with her sister
Vanessa and shared a lot of knowledge and new ideas with all members of that
Revolutionary Group. A Group mainly revolutionary because their liberal ideologies
and their fight against the old fashioned values of the Victorian Period. She became
established as one of the first promoters of the Feminist Movement of that age and she
was deeply interested in women’s rights. She started to write professionally in 1905
and after writing some essays and novels, she established her as one of the most
important writers of the experimental novel with the publication of Jacob’s Room in
1922. However, her most important and prolific novels were focused on her feminist
ideology. This ideology is reflected on the two works analysed in this paper: Orlando
and A Room of One’s Own. In the work Orlando, the feminist vision of the author is
reflected on the sexual identity of the protagonist. He/ She feels confused sometimes
by her/ his sexual identity, but, at the end, Orlando ends up to be comfortable being a
man or a being a woman. About this point, the equality of gender defended by the
author is reflected. She believed in the essence of being and thiscis reflected in other
elements of the novel such as the sexual duality of Orlando. On the other hand, A
Room of One’s Own is a protest about the old patriarchal system of the Victorian
Period. In this essay, Virginia Woolf defends the rights of women: being economically
and emotionally independent as well as having the right of integrate themselves in the
intellectual life of the British Society. Virginia Woolf’s feminist ideology is very
marked in A Room of One’s Own. The stream of consciousness is the fundamental
rhetorical device used in this novel. This literary device let her to show all the mental
process and investigation that helped her, in order to reach conclusions about the topic
of the woman and the novel. To finish these conclusions, it can be said that the general

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works and the social Contributions for women of Virginia Woolf were considered key
facts for the Prolific development of what we know nowadays as Feminism.

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 BIBILIOGRAPHY

1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf
2. http://www.biography.com/people/virginia-woolf-9536773
3. http://www.onu.edu/node/26779
4. http://www.shmoop.com/virginia-woolf/suicide.html
5. http://www.gradesaver.com/women-and-writing/wikipedia/work
6. http://www.azquotes.com/quote/611534
7. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dalloway/summary.html
8. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lighthouse/summary.html

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