womyn according to De Beauvoir, Woolf, me.

Simone de Beauvoir points out many problems faced by women, including the misogynistic view that burdens of gender division are "women's lot, since these are 'intended by Nature.'" According to Beauvoir, "The myth of the woman" involves a series of stereotypes, "a lot assigned to woman in the patriarchate; but it is in no way a vocation, any more than slavery is the vocation of the slave." She is saying that just because certain gender roles and stereotypes are prescribed to women do not mean that they are natural. The dominating male patriarchy wants society to think that women are naturally weaker so that the men can continue to manifest control while women maintain their subservience.

Virginia Woolf’s Room of One’s Own touches on the so called natural stereotypes that serve to create a system in which women agree to be dominated by men who feel it is their duty to exert their power. “For to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether,” Wolf says. “Consider the facts, we said. First there are the nine months before the baby is born. Then the baby is born. Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby.” Wolf continues to surmount the argument many people made against higher education for women, which is based on the stereotypical role of mother and caregiver without regard for a woman’s ability or right to personal fulfillment. Wolf herself does not agree with these views, and she feels it is the existence of these views and roles that hold women back.

Although both Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf point out problems faced by women, they don’t seem to offer solutions. Woolf’s character is shut out of a library because she is an unaccompanied female, and she simply turns away, angry and dejected, but admits that the institution does not care about her plight. It is almost as if she accepts it. Although this solution is not spelled out, both women are feminists who seem to be using writing as an outlet. They also both agree that the ‘myth of a woman’ has some roots in literature and pose questions about women’s relationship to literature. De Beauvoir says, "The myth of woman plays a considerable part in literature; but what is its importance in daily life? To what extent does it affect the customs and conduct of individuals?" Woolf's entire essay is based on this subject because she tells us, that she was "asked to speask about women and fiction." Perhaps their suggestion of a solution for the problems faced by women is to use literature as a vehicle to highlight the injustices their sex faces while creating new truths of what it means to be a woman.