Feminism

Simone de Beauvoir bemoans women’s subservient position in both life and literature as a stubborn ‘myth’. “The division of humanity into two classes of individuals is a static myth.” She continues with obvious sarcasm, “the idea is indisputable because it is beyond the given: it is endowed with absolute truth.” De Beauvoir understands the male dominating class created this ideology of women’s submissiveness; “justifies all privileges and even authorizes their abuse”. Virginia Woolf also extends the question of women and fiction, to address the issue as it arises realistically. In her work, “A Room of My Own”, Woolf exchanges the word ‘myth’ for ‘prejudice’ although the similarity is clear. “The collar that I spoke of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground.” (2) Both are challenging these conventions.
The authors offer different solutions to the problem. Obviously, the common enemy is the male dominant caste. According to de Beauvoir, any societal improvements for women will require a change in this male hegemony, “few myths have been more advantageous to the [male] ruling caste than the myth of the woman”. Woolf suggests a very practical approach, “a woman must have money and a room of her own” (2), a freedom women were refused “to earn money was impossible for them… the law denied them the right to possess what money they owned” (12). Subservience and the infliction poverty imposes on the mind could, according to Woolf, only be solved with wealth. Woolf’s solution seems to be a potential way of achieving de Beauvoir’s ideology repair. Wealth and its promise for education is arguably a wonderful way of challenging male dominated thought. I would like to believe that rational logical argument would succeed in persuading the male class that women are their equal.
“The myth of women plays a considerable part in literature; but what is its importance in daily life?” de Beauvoir prefaces her essay with this question, challenging how the ‘myth’ pertains to literature and reality. Woolf hints at an answer, “Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact.” The situation Woolf addresses in her stories of women with preconceived societal prejudices is drawn from reality.