Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf both write from a critical feminist perspective. They recognize that there are problems for women present not only in literature, but in their day-to-day lives as well. One question that can be addressed by reading Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is this: What kind of treatment were women subjugated to and did this ideology carry on to the generations that followed? The texts that we are about to discuss points to the answer yes.
“The myth of woman, sublimating an immutable aspect of the human condition – namely the ‘division’ of humanity into two classes of individuals – is a static myth” (Beauvoir p. 41). It is evident that the division Beauvoir speaks of is between women and men, and she calls it “immutable” because she doesn’t think that this will ever change. The myth of women chains a woman to the pre-conceived notions placed upon her by society, forcing her to be lower in status than a man. If a woman deviates from this pre-set role, they are “told not that Femininity is a false entity, but that women concerned are not feminine” (Beauvoir p. 41). The criticism is directed toward individuals rather than this mystical thought because of the idea that women should fit this particular ideal. The men not only condone this system, but they exploit it as well. They use these dogmas to further inhibit their supposed female inferiors and prevent any opposition with the excuse that this order is “intended by nature” (Beauvoir).
The experiences of Woolf’s character are not any better, as she travels between the colleges for men and the ones for women. As a woman she is not even allowed to walk the same way as the men and instead of fighting it her reaction is, “Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path” (Woolf). There is no indignation or disgust for the way she is treated – instead, it is just accepted because these rules were considered natural. It is absurd that “ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction” (Woolf), and yet, this was commonplace as well.
There is a massive difference between the men’s school, Oxbridge, and the women’s school, Fernham because education for a man was more important than that for a woman. The women running Fernham have barely enough money to purchase the bare necessities while Oxbridge enjoys the luxuries of fine dining, laboratories, and superb libraries. The narrator believes that “if Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had amassed great wealth and laid it under the foundations of college and library, because, in the first place, to 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. It is only for the last forty–eight years that Mrs Seton has had a penny of her own. For all the centuries before that it would have been her husband’s property—a thought which, perhaps, may have had its share in keeping Mrs Seton and her mothers off the Stock Exchange. Every penny I earn, they may have said, will be taken from me and disposed of according to my husband’s wisdom” (Woolf).
Woolf attributes the problems of the school’s poverty to the inequality of women that they suffered for many years. They had no ability to earn, save, or finance anything and now, the future generations are suffering from the suppression of their mothers and grandmothers and still feeling the prejudices that seem unshakable.