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Essay / The Role of Women's Literature in Promoting Feminism
During the Victorian period, women were “strongly encouraged to adopt attributes of purity, domesticity, and submission” (Bland, Jr. 120). These values and ideals have been projected into the writing of many different forms of female-led literature. “The Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs is an example of a slave narrative intended to elicit sympathy from readers while keeping them at a comfortable distance from the brutalities depicted in the text. Another example of this dichotomy is found in Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," a feminist essay that challenges conventional anti-feminist sentiments that were prevalent in the Victorian era. Despite their differences, Jacobs and Woolf's works are both aimed at a white female audience. The predominant difference between their works is that Jacobs's writing conforms to the expectations of her readers by magnifying the attributes of purity, domesticity and submission, while Woolf breaks with conventions and mocks these characteristics by using the irony and sarcasm. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an Original EssayA close reading of “A Slave Girl’s Life” and “A Room of One’s Own” reveals that both authors target a predominantly female. This fact is almost startlingly evident in Jacobs's account, which speaks directly to a female reader: "But, O happy women, whose purity has been protected from childhood" (Jacobs 54). This passage demonstrates that Jacobs is directing her narrative voice toward a female audience and, more specifically, that she hopes to target the “white, Northern woman” (Fox-Genovese 7). The fact that she is trying to reach this group of people is illustrated by her writing style: she uses literary English and inserts quotation marks around grammatically "incorrect" slave dialogue. An interesting point to note is that when Jacobs herself is engaged in dialogue, she places quotation marks around her own words, but instead of using ungrammatical dialogue as she does when transcribing the words of others slaves, she uses correct grammar. The following passage illustrates this point: “Don't run away, Linda. Your grandmother is overwhelmed with trouble now. » I replied, “Sally, they are going to take my children to the plantation tomorrow; and they never will. sell them to anyone as long as they have me in their power. (Jacobs 96) The first two lines are spoken by a slave and are characterized by poor grammar and incorrect spelling. Subsequently, the protagonist, Linda Brent, speaks using correct grammar. This shows that Jacobs wants the reader to make a distinction between her and the slaves. Ultimately, she hopes to identify with "white, northern women" and wants to present herself on the same level as them. His writing style incorporates many of the “attitudes and assumptions of the Anglo-American establishment regarding literacy” (Garfield 63). Indeed, Jacobs seeks to attract his target audience by magnifying the values predominant in mainstream society while simultaneously creating a sympathetic relationship with the reader by incorporating these values into his narrative. The intention behind writing a narrative about slavery while conforming to the attitudes of white society is, as Frances Smith Foster notes, "to encourage Northern women to resist slavery" ( 63). Jacobs' abolitionist message might not have had such an impact if she had written her slave narrative using exclusively "incorrect" grammar and following the speech patterns of dialogue between slaves. Jacobs' anti-slavery message does notwas not addressed to the slaves themselves, but rather to the women of the North. Examining Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own," it is clear that she too hoped to attract a female audience. . The sentence “What had our mothers done back then that they had no wealth to leave us?” (Wool 21). The "our" and "we" refer to girls, so it is obvious that Woolf's text is aimed at women. Jane Marcus states that Woolf uses a “fictional narrative technique that demands open sisterhood as the reader's stance” (Beja 158). This is reflected in the quote above, where Woolf engages the reader and asks a question that she does not answer herself. This serves the dual purpose of forcing the reader to interact with the narrator and promoting critical thinking. Furthermore, it is an example of Woolf's desire to defy "the prevailing fashion among the intelligentsia": her writings broke with the conventions of the Victorian era and produced a feminist text when feminism was out of fashion (156 ). While Jacobs and Woolf both target a white female audience, they do so with very different intentions. Jacobs tries to get closer to the white woman of the North by magnifying her values and writing in traditional (“literary”) English. She presents an abolitionist vision of slave life while arousing sympathy from her audience. She urges her readers to resist slavery and feel compassion for those who still suffer in bondage. Woolf, on the other hand, mocks the same values that Jacobs reveres (purity, domesticity, and submission) with sarcasm and irony. Woolf emphasizes that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she wants to write fiction” (Woolf 4)2E. This illustrates Woolf's belief that women are economically oppressed and that their creativity is limited by this rampant oppression. The ideals and values of the Victorian era are illustrated in "The Life of a Slave Girl" because Jacobs incorporates many of these attributes into her writing. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese states that "Jacobs never shows Linda beaten or raped, dirty or disfigured" (7), to avoid tarnishing her narrative voice and that of her protagonist, Linda Brent. Had she acted otherwise, she “would have been unacceptably labeled illegal in Victorian America” (Garfield 81). Instead of explicitly describing sexual abuse, she uses confession as a way to reach her audience while maintaining her pure identity. P. Gabrielle Forman refers to the phrase “Pity me and forgive me, O righteous reader! ", stating that "this passage acts to absolve [the reader] as much as it seeks to absolve Linda" (Jacobs 55; Garfield 81). The fact that Jacobs absolves herself and the white reader of the guilt of these horrific events shows that she conforms to the puritanical values of the Victorian era by avoiding vivid descriptions of the true brutality of a situation. She does this in an attempt to convince her readers that even though Linda Brent is a slave, she is nonetheless a woman, just like them (Fox-Genovese 7). Woolf does not undertake the difficult task of convincing her readers that she is like them. , because this fact is already assumed. It is understood that Woolf, like her readers, is “pure.” This, essentially, gives Woolf an advantage, because her readers can identify with her life, whereas they might have a harder time identifying with Jacobs' life as a slave. This highlights the fact that Woolf, as an upper-class woman, already has an established relationship with her audience, while Jacobs attempts to establish a largely artificial connection. This advantage allows Woolf to use irony and sarcasm to mock the conventions of the Victorian era, whereas the writings ofJacobs must comply. This disparity explains why Jacobs merely alludes to the many brutalities of slavery, rather than openly discussing them. Being a victim of sexual assault suggests that she is an object rather than a “woman like them.” This also explains why P. Gabrielle Forman declares that Jacobs absolves both the reader and herself. Jacobs wants to rid the reader of the inherent guilt of being their enslaver and, in essence, being seen as a woman. Had Jacobs described the brutality of slavery in detail, she would have lost the connection she sought to establish with her readers, because she would have strayed from Victorian standards of purity. This would have resulted in the alienation of its intended audience, and its message to northern white women urging them to renounce slavery would have been less meaningful because readers would be unable to identify with the author. By successfully shaping her story around the values of mass society, Jacobs is able to attract her target audience and deliver a powerful message urging upper-class women to resist slavery. As Jean Fagan Yellin notes in her introduction to Jacobs' autobiography, "a number of Southern women responded to Linda Brent's experience as a woman and mother beyond her experiences as a woman and black mother” (Bland Jr. 126). This illustrates Jacobs' ability to penetrate beyond his target audience but, more importantly, it shows that by conforming to Victorian era values, Jacobs is able to effectively "mask" his blackness and elicit sympathy of his white readers. espousing the ideal of motherhood throughout her writings garners more sympathy from her readers. She magnifies the ideal of domesticity because “19th-century bourgeois culture elevated [motherhood] to unprecedented heights of sentimentality” (Fox-Genovese 4). Yellin's point is corroborated when it becomes clear that using the theme of motherhood is an effective tool for building rapport with the reader. Since motherhood played a crucial role in the Victorian lifestyle, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese believes that "Jacobs reshaped Linda Brent's memories of her mother for narrative purposes" (8). She connects this idea to Linda's laments about motherhood: "when I leave my children, they cannot remember me with as much satisfaction as I remembered my mother" (Jacobs 90). She argues that although Linda could not remember much about her mother, because she was only six years old when her mother died (Jacobs 6), such memories serve "the important mission of maintaining the 'ideal of motherhood'. This shows that Jacobs upholds the values and ideals of the Victorian period; in this case, the domestic ideal (Fox-Genovese 8). This example suggests that Jacobs may have slightly fictionalized his writing when describing his mother. However, this little deception allows him to appeal to his target audience by incorporating contemporary ideals into his writing. Timothy Dow Adams states that deviations from the hard truth in autobiographies are “not just something that inevitably happens; rather, it is a highly strategic decision” (Adams X). If this principle is applied to Jacobs's portrayal of motherhood, it becomes clear that she chooses to lie because she hopes that by emphasizing the ideal of motherhood she will be able to establish a relationship with its audience. As noted earlier, Woolf does not do this. having the difficult task of convincing her readers that she is like them; she already has an established relationship with her female audience. This gives Woolf the freedom to use sarcasm whendiscusses the ideals that Jacobs glorifies. Instead of glorifying the ideal of domestic life, she asks her readers to question the character of their mothers: What had our mothers done then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powder your nose? Do you look at store windows? Showing off in the sun in Monte-Carlo? (Woolf 21) In this passage, Woolf engages her female audience by mocking the conventions of domestic life, which place women in such an extraordinary economic situation. She wonders what women have done with their lives when, in the end, they have no money to earn it. Additionally, because Woolf is able to identify with her readers, she is free to express her belief that women have been too busy focusing on their appearance and "showing off" to have earned their own money . This supports Woolf's main argument that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (Woolf 4). Wolf asserts that the economic oppression that hinders women's creativity will only be lifted once women break the conventions of domestic life and gain financial independence. It is clear that Woolf rejects domestic life, while Jacobs values the feminine ideal. Looking at other ideals and values espoused during the Victorian era, it becomes clear that this trend is reflected in each author's text. Jacobs conforms to the idea of submission by presenting herself as inferior, while Woolf makes sarcastic remarks about the inferiority of women. The following passage from Jacobs' text illustrates this point: What would you be if you were born and raised a slave, with generations of slaves as your ancestors? I admit that the black man is inferior. But what makes it so? This is the ignorance in which white men force him to live. (Jacobs 44) This passage reveals that Jacobs conforms to the ideal of submission, as she says, “I admit that the black man is inferior” (Jacobs 44). Obviously, Jacobs does not believe that the black man is truly inferior; however, she thinks he is ignorant. He is ignorant because he continues to live in slavery, like his ancestors. She draws attention to this fact because it is not the black man's fault that he is inferior; it is the institution of slavery that makes it so. Jacobs makes this statement subtly because she doesn't want to offend her target audience to the point that they are appalled by her frankness. Instead, she hopes to present a gentler perspective on why the black man is inferior and garner sympathy from her audience while urging Northern women to blame slavery. Woolf mocks the ideal of submission using sarcasm and irony, while Jacobs clearly mocks slavery. this is not the case. The following passage shows Woolf's desire to mock the values of the Victorian era: Women have served for all these centuries as mirrors possessing the magical and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without this power, the earth would probably still be a swamp and a jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. (Woolf 35) An analysis of this passage reveals that Woolf is mocking the convention of submission. She claims that women are just tools that men use to boost their egos. She uses the metaphor of women as “glasses,” magnifying men to twice their size. By this Woolf means that men view themselves as superior and objectify women in order to ensure their inferiority. The passage does not have a submissive tone; rather it is remarkably biting and sarcastic. Woolf sarcastically says that the earth would not be civilized without man. » (36).., 1989.