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  • Essay / Virginia Woolf's fight against gender inequalities

    Across a wide variety of cultures throughout history, women have had to endure lower status than men. Many women and feminists have stood up to fight or oppose this inequality, and Virginia Woolf is no exception. In order to express her disapproval of the underlying attitude towards women's place in society, Woolf described a situation in which women were deprived of the pleasures of expensive foods. While visiting a university, Woolf witnessed two very different meals. The extravagant feast was reserved for men, while women received a far less glamorous meal. Through her use of detail, syntax, and imagery, Woolf contrasts the privileges of men with the bare necessities afforded to women. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Through her memories of specific details, Virginia Woolf recounted the stark contrasts between meals served to men and women at colleges. While the men received “numerous and varied partridges, with all their retinue of sauces and salads”, the women received beef, more precisely “the rumps of cattle in a muddy market”. The men also had a dessert confection so elegant that “to call it pudding and thus associate it with rice and tapioca would be an insult.” On the other hand, women had to swallow prunes which “even softened by custard, are an uncharitable vegetable”. Even the drinks that students at this university were allowed to consume depended on their gender. The men's wine glasses were refilled repeatedly throughout the meal, but the women received only a jug of water which was "generously distributed." Not only did the content of Woolf's sentences describe the differences between the treatment of men and women during the meal. during this period, the structure of her sentence also suggested that Woolf was outraged by discrimination against women. Unlike the eloquent and complex sentences found in the passage describing the men's meals, the passage describing the women's meal conditions used short, simple sentences. Woolf opened the scene by stating: "It is part of the novelist's convention not to mention the soup, the salmon and the ducklings, as if the soup, the salmon and the ducklings were of no importance, as if no one had never smoked a cigar or had a drink. of wine” among men. On the other hand, Woolf introduced the passage regarding the ladies' meal with a direct statement: “Here is my soup. Moreover, the men were described in elegant sentences that confirmed that they were all going "to heaven...in other words, how beautiful life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how insignificant this grudge or grievance, how admirable each other's friendship and companionship. it was like lighting a good cigarette, placed among the cushions of the window seat” once the meal was finished. Conversely, for the women, Woolf simply declared that “the meal was over” and the women all dispersed from the dining room. The long sentences gave off a feeling of contentment, while the abrupt sentences used to describe the women's meal gave off a feeling of frustration and anger. In addition to the use of syntax, Woolf also used imagery to provoke awareness that although women and men received similar food at university, the quality of the men's food surpassed that of the women. Although they have.