Virginia Woolf's Feminist Critique and Resistance
Classified in Social sciences
Written at on 
English with a size of 2.63 KB.
She is not only demanding equality. She recognizes that unless women fully participate in education and the professions etc. they can never hope to have any influence over society. Also, one of her strongest arguments is that the only way women can help to prevent war is for men to allow women this full participation.
In the final part of Three Guineas, Woolf replies to the barrister who is appealing to her to sign a manifesto pledging herself to protect culture and intellectual liberty and join his society. Here she points out that women of her class have already contributed to male intellectual liberty for centuries, because all the money that could be spent on the education of women has been spent on men. However, Woolf is not opposed to the idea of resisting dictatorship and protecting the “democratic ideas of equal opportunity for all”. She says the feminists must fight against the Fascistic State. She also introduces sexual difference as something brought about by how society is structured. Society for women has been a question of exclusions at every level.
Woolf's conclusion can be applied to all forms of subordination or exclusion whether that is class, gender, race/ethnicity, or sexuality.
From the point of view of method, Woolf’s approach can be seen as significant through:
- Providing a critique of patriarchal culture that probed the relations of power that helped to perpetuate the systematic subordination of women.
- Helping us to see sexual identity as a cultural construction and how representation functions with relation to repression.
- Showing how contexts of difference can challenge simple notions of identity and how culture can be seen as gendered.
- Making us aware of the role of what are now known as ‘signifying practices’ (how representations influence our knowledge and understanding)
- Demonstrating the importance of historical contexts and concepts like gender, ‘difference’, and ‘other’ (women are seen as significantly different and as secondary). This idea of ‘the other’ can be adapted to any situation, whether we are talking about gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, or other concepts like age. Of course, ‘the other’ can be seen the other way round: how dominant groups are viewed or represented by the subordinate.
- Providing an effective demonstration of a key area of resistance and struggle in contemporary culture.