4-Professions for Women

Lesson Four Professions for Women

Objectives

To enable the students

1) To grasp some knowledge about literature terms including modernism, stream of consciousness, feminist writers and women’s liberation movement,

2) To appreciate the poetic and symbolic quality, the subtle style as well as their rich historical and literary reference of Woolf’s works.

3) To understand the speech by making comparison between the dominant social values and women’s conditions now and then.

Time Allotment:

The teaching plan will be carried out within 8 periods.

Background Information

About the Author:

Virginia Woolf: 1882—1941, English novelist, critic, and essayist. 1) one of the world’s greatest writers of modernism 2) woman writer for women liberation, solving women’s issues.

In the home of her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf reared/ brought up in an atmosphere of literature and learning, receiving her education in her father’s own extensive library and meeting many of the outstanding literary and intellectual figures of the day. She was keenly aware that if she had been a boy she would have gone on to Cambridge or Oxford. Later with this sense of injustice, she wrote two feminist works, A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). Her mother died when she was 13.and she had a mental breakdown. When she had a second mental breakdown she tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. She remained in frail health all her life. After her father’s death, Virginia and her sister, Vanessa, hosted many gatherings of artists and writers who had been friends at Cambridge University. This began what came to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. Virginia Woolf’s books draw largely on her own life experience. Her childhood provides the background for her novel To the Lighthouse. Almost all of her characters are members of her own leisured, intellectual, upper—middle class. Many of the novels are set in London, where she lived most of her life. In 1941, profoundly depressed by the war and afraid of the recurrence of a nervous breakdown, she filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse, leaving suicide note for her husband and sister. Her major works include Jacob’s room 1922; Mrs Dalloway 1925; To the Lighthouse 1927; Orlando: A Biography 1928 ; A Room of One’s Own 1929 ; and essays The Death of a Moth 1942; A Haunted House 1943. Figurative speech: metaphor e.g. angel; fisherman; room for your own

Do you like this essay? Why or why not?

Detailed Study of the Text

Part I paras 1-2 the beginning part of the whole speech, introducing the topic under discussion.

Para 1 Main idea: In the profession of literature, the author finds that there are fewer experiences peculiar to women than in other profession because many women writers before her have made the road smooth.

1.Why does the author say that in the profession of literature---that are peculiar to women? The answer is in the next sentence: The road was cut many years ago by many famous women writers as well as many more unknown and forgotten women writers who have been before her, who have made the path smooth, regulating her steps. The implied meaning is that other professions, such as science, medicine, law, are newer for women, and therefore the road is harder for them, with more experiences peculiar to them. The profession of drama is an exception. Like literature, drama also involves more women than other profession.

2. All the women mentioned above are women writers who have made special contributions to English literature in their unique way. Here the author does not want to make a long list, but intends to give the idea that early women writers like Burney and Helen had already made their way into the profession of literature as early as in the 17th century.

3. Then, when I came to write, there are few material obstacles in my way: Here ―material obstacles‖ implies that there are other obstacles in her way, probably obstacles opposed to material, that is, obstacles of spiritual, mental or psychological nature. As readers, we naturally expect a discussion of those obstacles in the following parts of the essay.

4. Family peace was not broken by the scratching of a pen. Family peace: 1) Writing can’t make noise, so, calm, quiet, tranquility; 2) no quarrel with husband and others while you’re busy writing. So, harmony, lack of worry and quarrels

5. No demand was made upon the family purse: There was no need for a writer to spend much of the family money in order to write. You just spend little money on writing, because you just need paper which is very cheap.

6.if one has a mind that way: a witty remark. The implied meaning is that though everybody can afford the money to buy paper to write all the plays of Shakespeare, who has the kind of intelligence and talent that produced those great works.

7. Pianos and models, Paris, Vienna and Berlin, masters and mistresses, are not needed by a writer: If you want to be a musician or a painter, you must own a piano or hire models, and you have to visit or even live in cultural centers like Paris, Vienna and Berlin. And you have to be taught by masters or mistresses. However, if you want to be a writer, you don’t need all these.

8. Ls The cheapness of writing paper is the reason why--- in the other professions: In the patriarchal society women have been forced into a lower financial status that men. Para2 transitional para -----easiness of writing to difficulty of writing

In this para the author responds to the host’s suggestion that she should tell the audience sth. About her own professional experiences. So she tells her own story---how she became a book reviewer when she was a girl.

1. from left to right from morning to night from beginning to end from top to

tail

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