"Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf, Summary and analysis.
BBS II, Business Communication, Visions.
Summary and
Analysis:
Virginia Woolf’s speech
“Professions for Women” is a speech intended for The Women’s Service League in
1931. Having Virginia Woolf as the speaker and writer of the piece already says
a lot about the content, not to mention the title of the speech itself. She was
supposed to talk about her professional experiences as a novelist. Professional
women at the time of the speech were clearly few in number, and most women were
still under an extreme patriarchal society.
Analysis of Professions for Women
Instead of the typical
speech about a professional life, Woolf preferred to speak about a personal
dilemma of being a professional woman instead. In her speech, she discusses two difficulties in her life as a writer. The first
one is the trouble of a recurring fictitious character of the Angel in the
House. She describes the character to be “intensely sympathetic. She was
immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult
arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily”.
Clear in her
descriptions, she is not fond of the Angel in the House which is why she keeps
on terminating her. The angel would always lurk (hidden) behind her every time
she writes. She keeps on reminding her that Woolf is a young woman writing
reviews about works of men, so she ought to be tender (kind),
gentle, and always flattering in her words. The Angel in the House apparently
symbolizes the recurring problems of being a woman. As
a woman, domestic obligation is still attached to them no matter how many
feminist movements are formed.
The next predicament
(difficult) that Woolf mentions in her speech is her problem with her body. The
obstacles against her are still immensely powerful—and yet they are very
difficult to define”.
In this section of her speech, she is
referring to the sexual aspect of being a woman and how it could impede
(hinder/ hamper) the minds of women writers. Apparently, Woolf has become more
detailed and literal in her reference to women’s struggles.
It is noticeable that
Woolf did not intend to deliver a typical speech about how she became a
professional writer as a woman. Instead, she resorted to revealing personal
struggles that characterize a woman’s encounters despite the fact that she is
already a professional. She stressed the fact that being a professional woman
writer is completely different from a being a professional man in any field.
She wished to inculcate this idea to the women in The Women’s Service League
not to discourage them but to help them face the continuous battle of the sexes
in terms of professions.
Evidently, Woolf has
become too personal in her speech to The Women’s Service League. She did not
give a speech of encouragement to the audience but preferred opening their eyes
to the reality of being a woman. Like the Angel in the House, she intended to
reveal to the audience that trying to become a professional in a certain field
requires great strength to endure the demands of domesticity.
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