What Is The Silencing Of Women By Francis Woolf

1095 Words5 Pages

In Woolf’s era, women were put in a tough position in society. Their opportunities were limited, and they were not given a forum to share their ideas, or create. Women were fighting an uphill battle against society. Men silenced women in society, rendering their opinions unheard and unwelcomed. The silencing of women resulted in an unequal relationship dynamic. Men used women as a platform to maintain their power. While women were silenced and used only as a platform for men to rise to power, all opportunity in society was lost for women. In response to her harsh reality of limited opportunity and lack of a space to create, Woolf decided to write a novel advocating for women’s rights, wanting to open the eyes of her any resistant readers …show more content…

Woolf makes specific choices in her writing that allows a resistant reader the opportunity to take a step back and reevaluate the position of women in that time. Woolf brings in the resistant reader through a human connection for the desire to be able to express oneself. Woolf discusses the idea of the expression of anger, and who should have the right to do so. “I had been angry because he was angry. Yet it seemed absurd, I thought, turning over the evening paper, that a man with all this power should be angry,” (Woolf 34). In this instance she expresses her frustration that even though men have every opportunity they want, and all the power they want, they are still angry. From this passage the reader can determine that Woolf feels like she can’t express her own anger, …show more content…

This scene she explains in the novel could be looked at by it serving as a metaphor for her life passing her by. She is limited in her opportunities. She brings in the resistant reader here, because most of everyone can relate to the fact of lost opportunities of some kind. By allowing the reader a glimpse into her life of limited opportunity, she allows her reader to contemplate what it would be like to have missed out on speaking their own mind and expressing their beliefs. Woolf arouses these sorts of questions hoping to open the eyes of resistant readers. She wants resistant readers to realize that women were not even close to the same as men when it came to opportunities. This lost opportunity is a consequent from the innate superiority of men during Woolf’s