Kristina Brause

In past literature women were almost non existent as characters and absent as writers and publishers. Virginia Woolf states in A Room of One's Own, "What one would expect to find would be that rather later perhaps some great lady would take advantage of her comparative freedom and comfort to publish something with her name to it and risk being thought a monster"(61). Woolf shows how women were afraid to produce or publish because of how men, or society in general, would react. Many women wrote in secrecy; for instance, Virginia Woolf tells of Lady Winchilsea who wrote: Alas! a woman that attempts the pen, Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed, The fault can by no virture be redeemed. They tell us we mistake our sex and way; Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing, play, Are the accomplishments we should desire; To write, or read, or think, or to enquire, Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time, And interupt the conquests of our prime, Whilst the dull manage of a servile house Is held by some our utmost art and use. With this in mind, Woolf points out how Lady Winchilsea states that women had to have high courage in order to publish literature which many did not. She also says that women were meant to be silent, of "Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing, play" and learning "would cloud [their} beauty." In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft states "It is time to effect a revolution in female manners- time to restore them their lost dignity-and make them, as part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves, to reform the world". In this selection, Wollstonecraft states that women should be allowed to write and free their thoughts through literature.

Woolf, Virginia. "A Room of One's Own." English 201 British Literature Course Packet. Ed. Stuart Lishan. Columbus: Greyden Press, 1999.