Without a Voice

One of the major problems for women could simply be that they do not have any means of wealth. As Virginia Woolfe points out, the most simple task, such as writing requires money and a room of her own. Through reading these stories, it seems as though women had neither. Although things today are a lot better, many issues seem biased in the favor of men. The world did not really belong to women and so things like entering a library alone or being able to converse about archeology or mathematics seemed years away. A major problem it seems is that wealth is something handed down from each generation, an inheritance that women were excluded from. "[T]o earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned. Since women could not own any property or money, there was no legacy to leave and nothing they could do to help the future generation of women.

"To pose women is to pose the absolute Other, without reciprocity, denying against all experience that she is a subject, a fellow human being." (pg 41) Simone de Beauvoir seems to have the same opinion as Woolfe. They both feel as though the realm spanning across the world does not belong to them. Both authors describe the problem as being that they do not exist and through separation of sex, they have lost their humanity. In both passages, the authors seem to be confirming opinions of women and a bias that they are meek and quiet. Both Woolfe and de Beauvoir seem to have lost their voice and fall silently into place when a man tells them to. They do not seem to do anything to suggest a solution. Maybe it is because they have become so accustomed to not speaking up and expressing their ideas, that all they can do is know what is wrong and pray that a man will compliment them on a yellow dress that they feel hideous in.

Although they are writing about a way things were that was so wrong, there has been some progress made. The fact that there are even some women writers breaking the cannon that was dominated by white males allows for a different type of literature. However, being that males control this cannon and what is produced from it, there still lays the idea hegemony and the illusion of choice. Perhaps we only think that there is progress being made while meanwhile, millions of women stay silent behind closed doors.