摘 要

伍尔夫的作品主要是描写女性的内心活动， 这在那时是比较创新的写作手法。主流的英国评论家认为伍尔夫的小说要逊色于她的散文和评论作品。她的作品观点新颖，你会沉浸在她巧妙构思的文学作品里而无法自拔。并且她对女性主义及女性作家有很大的贡献，特别是她的作品《一间自己的房间》。伍尔夫的《一间自己的房间》主要讲的是关于女性和写作的问题。这本著作由六章组成，是由原来伍尔夫的两篇讲稿扩充而成。本文将着重介绍《一间自己的房间》中的女权主义思想。本论文主要包括五个部分。第一部分是对伍尔夫的介绍。第二部分是关于本书的介绍。第三部分是关于《一间自己的房间》里的女权主义思想的探讨。第四部分介绍《一间自己的房间》以及伍尔夫对中国文学的影响。第五部分则是结论。

关键词：女权主义；伍尔夫；私人空间；女性力量

Abstract

Virginia Woolf’s novel is mainly about women’ inner life in a way that was new at that time. Viginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is mainly about woman and fiction. It is agreed by the main stream British critics that her essays and reviews are better than her novels. She has so many original ideas that you can’t help falling into her inner world by reading her cleverly conceived essays. And also, she is an important contributor to feminism about woman writers, especially in the essays A Room of One’s own. This book contains six chapters. It was extended from two speeches of Virginia Woolf. This thesis will work on the feminist thoughts in A Room of One’s own. The whole thesis includes four parts. The first part is the introduction of Virginia Woolf. The second part is the introduction of A Room of One’s own. The third part is about feminism in A Room of One’s own. The fourth part is about the influences of A Room of One’s Own on Chinese Literature. The fifth part is the conclusion.

Key words: feminism; Virginia Woolf; A Room of One’s own; woman power

Contents

1 Introduction of Virginia Woolf 1

2 Introduction of A Room of One's Own 3

2.1 The Position of A Room of One's Own 3

2.2 The Content of A Room of One's Own 3

3 Feminist Thoughts in A Room of One’s Own 8

3.1 Advocating Female Writing, Female Voice 8

3.2 Raising Less Children 8

3.3 Owning Money And a Room of Oneself 9

3.4 Possessing an Androgynous Brain 9

4 The Influences of A Room of One’s Own on Chinese Literature 11

5 Conclusion 13

References 14

Acknowledgments 15

Woolf’s Feminism in

A Room of One’s own

1 Introduction of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite author . In her short life time, she dedicated a lot of masterpiece. Here are a list of her works: The Voyage Out,Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando. Most of her works are about feminism and she has a talent describing human’s inner mind world. And she is also one of the pioneer of the stream of consciousness literature along with authors Marcel Proust(1871—1922) and James Joyce (1882-1941) and herself, however, led a very rough life for her mental illness problem. I admire her for her genius as an author. And I feel sorry for her miserable childhood. If not for that, she would live much longer and create more masterpiece to enlighten us and guide feminism to a higher place.

Virginia Woolf’s novel is mainly about women’ inner life in a way that was new at that time. It is agreed by the main stream British critics that her essays and reviews are better than her novels. She has so many original ideas that you can’t help falling into her inner world by reading her cleverly conceived essays. And also, she is an important contributor to feminism about woman writers, especially in the essays A Room of One’s own.

Virginia Woolf had a sad childhood for her half-brother's sexual abuse and she got an issue with sex ever since（Sally Minogue, 2012 ,p5). That is why she didn’t trust men and often come to her female friend for help whenever she felt desperate and wanted to end her poor life. Later she met her beloved husband Leonard and her illness got better under Leonard’s good care. She and her husband Leonard didn't have any child because Leonard didn't want her to be occupied by house work. While Virginia took it the wrong way assuming that she is not attractive to her husband. We can see that Virginia Woolf is a very insecure woman. Later she had an affair with one of her female friend. For all of these reasons, she was labeled "tragic artist" and is favored by many groups: feminist; lesbian; mentally illness for sexual abuse; and novelists of course. She was all of these but she can't be defined as any of them. Her friends treasured her as smart and funny to be with.

For her death , there are suspect about her husband Leonard Woolf. Some people think that Leonard Woolf should take all the responsibility for he treated Woolf badly. While the truth is, Leonard treated Woolf with extra care and love which can be proved in Woolf letter to Leonard after she commit suicide.

“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again... What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good...I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”(Letters of Note Shaun Usher 2013 )We may never know what she had suffered, but we can imagine how bad the mental illness had done to her health which made her had to end her life in this way.She is surely a genius and when genius died, we lost a great fortune that can’t be replaced by anything else.

Woolf has been misread for her mental illness for too long. Some people might assume that her genius and creativity are due to her mental illness. As the illness an author have might change the way he or she sees things. Their specific perspective is what allows them to create a specific work. But that does not mean that she can not create any masterpiece. The illness can effect the way one sees the world and in return, which could effect the writing. She is still a genius no matter what. The mental illness is like her broken wings, which encouraged her to spot the deeper side of human beings. Though, in the end, she could bear it no more and commit suicide by drowning herself in a river.

She had an unfortunate life while what she had achieved in literature is marvelous. She spent her whole life fighting with her terrible mental illness as well as the society’s prejudice towards women. We should all be grateful for what she had done for us and try our best to continue her career: fighting for woman right. At least, we should bear it in mind that the position women have today is never easy and yet the gender prejudice still exists.