Rhetoric and Style: "Professions for Women" Virginia Woolf
Identify an example in the opening paragraph of each of the following, and explain its effect: understatement, parallel structure, rhetorical question, irony, and metonymy
"It is true I am a woman" understatement "It is true" repetition of the parallel structure "but what professional experiences have I had?" rhetorical question Irony: "of course" in the final statement "the scratching of a pen" "the family purse" metonymy
In paragraph 3, Woolf tells how she did her "best to kill the Angel in the House." Examine the words and images she uses to describe this act. Do you believe the violence of her descriptions to be appropriate? Explain why or why not.
A wonderful part of this essay is the juxtaposition of all that charm and sympathy and unselfishness with murder. Woolf descries her banishment of the Angel as an act of brutal murder. Her language is vivid and specific. Woolf "caught her by the throat" doing her "best to kill her...in self-defence". Then she points out that it was a kill or be killed situation, in which the Angel would annihilate Woolf's creativity if not vanquished first.
What is Woolf's overall tone in this speech? Because the tone evolves and shifts through the text, determining the overall tone is complex. Identify passages where Woolf displays various tones, sometimes in order to assume a specific personal, and then develop a description of the overall tone. You will probably need to use two words (possibly journey with but or yet) or a phrase rather than a single word. Does Woolf display anger, bitterness, resignation, aggression, apology, or combativeness? Or does she show a combination of these emotions or others?
As the question acknowledges, the tone shifts and is thus difficult to pin down. Possibilities include "Passionate yet analytical" and "reflective but forceful".
How does the shift in person in paragraph 4 serve Woolf's purpose? In what ways is this a transitional paragraph?
In this transitional paragraph, Woolf almost seems to take a breath from the "murder" in the previous one, as she says, "But to continue my story". She then directly addresses her audience with a series of questions that are more basic than those about work, jobs, or professions: "Ah, but what is 'herself'? I mean, what is a woman?" She flatters her audience: and applauds their efforts on behalf of women. She opens the next paragraph with, "But to continue the story of my professional experiences" and returns to her personal story. The paragraph provides a transition by recalling the central question of female identify and the essential nature of each woman to establish her own identity. The paragraph effectively links Woolf's powerful metaphor of killing the Angel to her audience and to the message she is delivering to them about themselves and their development as women.
Discuss the effect of the short, simple sentences that Woolf uses in paragraph 3. How do they contribute to her tone as she describes the Angel in the House?
It creates a kind of march--a monotony that embodies the point Woolf is making about this lockstep prescription for lives in which women do one thing after the other to please or minister ot others: "She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life." Note the adverbs in these three sentences; each emphasizing the wholeheartedness of the trait.
What is the effect in paragraph 5 of Woolf's referring to a novelist as he? Should Woolf have used she as though she was referring to herself? Why or why not?
She creates a powerful contrast between her series of parallel 'he' statements, in which she lists the activities of a novelist as he summons the power of his imagination, and her following with "I" and "she' descriptions, as she envision the female creative writer coming into conflict with the social implications of the passions associated with truly connecting with the imagination.
What is the effect of the personal anecdote in paragraph 2? Does the anecdote appeal mainly to logos or paths? Why is it especially effective for Woolf's audience?
Since the audience is likely all women, Woolf apples to pathos in her portrait of her younger self; she invites her audience to think of their young, and perhaps more idealistic and hopeful, selves. Describing herself in the third person makes it easier for the audience to imagine themselves in her place.
What does Woolf mean in the following description of the Angel in the House: "The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room"
Throughout the paragraph, Woolf describes the subtle incubation of the Angel in the House, the embodiment of a clear set of expectations that women themselves embrace and enforce. This 'ideal' casts her shadow, a sinister image, and invades the room even at the level of sound--those long Victorian skirts rustling.
Summarize the extended analogy Woolf develops in paragraph 5 to describe "a girl sitting with a pen in her hand". Explain its effect.
Woolf draws an analogy between the girl with a pen in hand and a fisher lying sunk in dreams not eh verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water." What's important is the dreams, not the rod (or pen) or her unconsciousness (the lake). " And then there was a smash" the imagination had hi the hard rock of sexism, stymieing any further production. This analogy between the girl and the fisherman gives Woolf the opportunity to paint a vivid picture, a concrete example of the more abstract idea of an artist creating.
By the time of this speech, Woolf's extended essay A Room of One's Own was well knowns as a feminist manifesto: Woolf claimed that every woman requires a separate income and a room of her own if she is to become an independent, productive woman. How was Woolf embellish this metaphor of a room fo one's own in paragraph 7? What is the effect?
Woolf extends her metaphor of "a room of one's own" by pointing out that at this stage, women have the means to secure their own rooms and pay the rent, but those rooms remain "bare". Now it is time to determine how those rooms should be "furnished" and "decorated," and --most importantly--"With whom are they going to share them and upon what terms?" The details of furnishing and decorating emphasize that Woolf believes women have reached another stage, at which they must face and answer further questions about how they want to live their lives. The idea of furnishing and decorating the rooms to which Woolf refers further develops her discussion of the imagination. Furnishing and decorations reflect one's personality and imagination. Developing one's inner self freely and with no restrictions or reservations is what Woolf emphasizes through the metaphor; thus embellishment of the room reflects the defining and development of the self.
How does Woolf present herself in the opening paragraph? What relationship is she establishing with her audience?
Woolf opens with a self-effacing tone. She admits a certain skepticism about how her own experience is relevant to the Women's Service League's concern with the "employment of women" and then explains how her profession, "literature" is one in which "there are very few material obstacles." In fact, she is actually beginning her argument, because as she points out the reasons that there are so few impediments to a woman becoming a writer--it is "a reputable and harmless occupation" that makes no "demands....upon the family purse" and can be carried out with the minimal cost of ink and paper--she is acknowledging the limitations of women's lives. Thus, even though Woolf is a woman with both income and a room of her own, she understands the constraints under which all women of her time live.
Would you characterize the language at the end of paragraph 5, where Woolf writes about 'the body' to be delicate and genteel, or euphemistic? Explain, keeping in mind the historical context of the work.
Woolf refers vaguely to "something about the body, about the passions" and later to "the truth about her passions." Is Woolf begging the question by not being more explicit about just what is women are limited to or prohibited from writing about?
