Krantz
English 2710
Guided readings
Virginia Woolf

1. What, in Woolf's early life, most likely prepared her to be a prolific writer? What would have made her a feminist?

2. What 3-4 events most influenced her life and her writing? What seems most closely connected to her essay "22 Hyde Park Gate"?

3. What tone seems to characterize the first few pages of "Hyde Park"? Demonstrate with a short paragraph. Watch descriptions.

4. Woolf characterizes her half-brother George as a "God, a faun, and a pig." What makes him God-like? Faun-like? Pig-like? What is his great ambition and how does he go about pursuing his end? What do you find oddest about the end of the essay?

5. How does Woolf describe the genius for writing of the Bronte's? What does she gain by pointing out their limitations?

6. Why would the story of Angela Williams be important to Woolf, the feminist?

6b. In "Moments of Being" what is the significance of the final scene?

7. In "A Room of Her Own" who is Shakespeare's Sister? How is it consistent with Woolf's portrayal of relationships among women elsewhere?

8. Woolf is both conscious and self-conscious as a feminine/feminist writer. She is bisexual, acutely aware of the own advantages,and concerned about the plight of the intelligent, middle-class woman. She addresses head-on and in terms of her own life, the challenges and the possibilities for women to function independently. How do these concerns show up in "Room"?

8. What does Woolf suggest (1341) to correct the paucity of knowledge about women's lives (her predominance in literature and invisibility in history)?

9. What qualities does Woolf give the Shakespeare's imaginary sister? What obstacles prevent her from attaining his fame?

10. What is needed, according to Woolf, to be a woman poet?

11. What is the Angel in the House and why does Woolf kill her?

12. What tension creates interest in Woolf's "Death of a Moth"?

Wollstonecraft
Woolstonecraft represents thinking that leads, ultimately, to modern notions of equality. The Age of Reason was characterized by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. These, in turn, were marked by notions of equality, and the superiority of reason over feeling and understanding over instinct. For a woman to develop wisdom, she needed and education equal to a man's.

Close reading of Vindication of the Rights of Women demands attention to the following:
p 258. Education
259. What women are "presently" like and why.
261. Women's degradation
263-4top. Need for education (after Milton)
268. Nature of the ideal marriage is what?
271 Problem with submissive gentleness.
273-4Why does Wollstonecraft think women read trashy novels? Should they?