Virginia Woolf: The Reflection Of Women's Place In Society

Through the use of description and tone, Virginia Woolf portrays women’s place in society through the act of describing two different meals. The difference in the meals represents the difference in places in society between men and women. Woolf begins her first passage with her declaration to “Defy the convention…” when it comes to describing lunch parties, and therefore she is also beginning her analysis on where she thinks women compared to men. Wolfs use of the word “whitest”, a superlative that has no lesser form, shows her stance on mens apparent upper hand on women. Woolf’s intention use of sentence structure in the first passage is that of very detailed sentences, which seem to go on forever like a gourmet food that keeps on

She shows the men as fully being in the moment, as they have “No need to be anybody but oneself.” This is also a deliberate remark on the societal standards for women to someone other than herself,and therefore be fake to please others. “ Here was my soup.” Woolfs second passage sets the tone of the paragraphs to follow. Right off the bat the reader can tell that the attitude has changed. By just reading the first sentence, Woolf displays that there will not be any of the sam lavish excitement that came with the mens meal. Woolf believes that just like the sentences structure of her second passage compared to the first, women are not entities to the same luxuries that men are, and women are often expected more by receiving less. The picture painted by the first passage is of a great, extravagant room made for a feast, where as the women’s room for eating is described in one small, blocky, lifeless sentence. “Everyone was assembled in the dining hall. Dinner was ready. Here was the soup. It was plain gravy soup. There was nothing to stir the fancy in that.” Woolf believed that women did not expect to have the same royalties that men