Antithesis and A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf is probably one of the top writers to have ever graced this planet. She redefined what writing is through a style that only she could muster. In the book, "A Room of One's Own" Woolfe uses an unseen rhetoric force to tell us about the struggles and issues associated with female authors in the early 1900's. It is within this "voice" that she is able to untangle the hypocrisy and sexism associated with writing and publication. A few things came to mind while I was reading "A Room of One's Own." The first being her usage of rhetorical devices and the second focusing around her literary elements. The main rhetorical element in which is consistently employed throughout the book is "antithesis." The University of Kentucky, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures, defined "Antithesis" as a rhetorical device focusing on "opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced and parallel construction." The second thing that came to mind was the literary concept of "the other" which seems to fit in as both as a literary element and a rhetorical device. My primary focus is on how Woolfe used these rhetorical devices to "show" the readers some of the issues faced by female writers.

In the book, "A Room of One's Own" Virginia Woolfe tells a tale of what it is like to be a female author. The reader learns of her struggles through her use of antithesis as a driving force used to clarify and explain a pretty terrible situation. She starts right at the beginning by telling us, the reader her views on "Women and Fiction." She starts out by telling us what the "words" "Woman and Fiction" might mean and begins to tell us her story. "They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done." Woolfe goes on to tell us the opposing side to her argument... "But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion." She may never be able to "come to a conclusion" but through their antithesis, the reader is clearly able to come up with the conclusion on their own. It is within this binary opposition that she begins to create and build upon her rhetorical force.

The opposition of Woolf's antithesis could very well be the "male" himself. According to Annette Kolodny's "Some Notes on Defining a 'Feminist Literary Criticism'" Woolf had studied a great deal of male authors for their style and technique in an effort to establish why they were being published. Kolodny tells us that Woolfe studied male writing in such great detail that "...a similar confinement could not be possible for the richness and variety of women's writing." The interesting thing here is that the antithesis contained within her writing is also embodied within the criticism of her writing. Kolodny goes on to say "But it is precisely that richness and variety which will escape us if we practice a criticism based on assumptions..." The literary critic, Annette Kolodney now faces the similar opposition as Woolfe herself expressed in the book.

Virginia Woolfe continues to use her rhetoric and voice as the story progress along. She never tells the reader what he or she should think and feel she just tells us the facts and we are able to draw our own conclusions as to what we should feel. A prime example is when Woolfe tied her antitilogical style into an example using Shakespeare... "I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare." Woolfe continues on with the other half of the antithesis... "Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. Shakespeare himself went, very probably,- his mother was an heiress - to the grammar school, where he may have learned Latin - Ovid, Virgil and Horace - and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighborhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practicing his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen. Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home." According to the book "Literature after Feminism" by Rita Felski, "Woolfe is a figure who is torn and contradictory, ambivalent and multifaceted, concerned with aesthetics and politics." It is through this articulation of style that Woolfe is able to lock on to certain literary devices and essentially "ride" them through the entire story. This is demonstrated throughout the story and Felski's commentary on Woolf's contradictory style further emphasizes her technique.

Virginia Woolf's comments on other authors such as George Elliot in order to further show this "opposite but equal" comparison. Woolf tells us about how useless men are "It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure. Lamb, Browne, Thackeray, Newman, Sterne, Dickens, De Quincey - whoever it may be - never helped a woman yet, though she may have learned a few tricks of them and adapted them to her use. The weight, the pace, the stride of a man's mind are too unlike her own for her to lift anything substantial from him successfully." Woolfe then goes on to tell us how great these same male authors were ... "All the great novelists like Thackeray and Dickens and Balzac have written a natural prose, swift but not slovenly, expressive but not precious, taking their own tint without ceasing to be common property." It is, once again her usage of antithesis as a literary devices that allow us to "see" both sides of the story. It is through this rhetorical voice that we, the reader feel like we are getting an unbiased account of what it is like to be a female writer. On one hand she tells us that men are not so good but she is willing to point out the good qualities as well. According to Margaret Kirkham's book "Jane Austin Feminism and Fiction" Jane Austin saw men in a similar way, particularly George Elliot; she goes on to tell us that... Woolfe "sees Austin as the well nigh miraculous example of the female artist of androgynous mind, whose are transcends such irritations as the author, as a women, must have experienced." This androgyny view of Woolf's further exemplifies the usage of antitheses within the story. The term androgynous is an example of opposing and balanced ideas, as was defined by "The University of Kentucky."

There is one line in particular that really stood out as a prime example of the antitholigical rhetorical device. Woolf was talking about Mary Carmichael's novel, "Life's Adventure" and she was thinking about Carmicheals writing style; and Woolf's thoughts were on weather, "she has a pen in her hand or a pickaxe." This once again resurrects the idea of antithesis and binary opposition. The pen has the ability to create, while the pick axe has the ability to destroy. The fact that she was wondering this about a female author and not the male counterpart shows us that either the male of the female can create or destroy. It was that line that eliminated any remaining idea that I may have had that Woolfe was more bias towards women. It was that idea that showed the equal oppositions associated with antithesis.

Another critical element employed by Woolfe was her concept of the "other." Annette Kolodney tells us "That women often write out of that different and sometimes 'other' perspective of experiences has now become virtually a truism in feminist critical circles." She was talking about the variations of styles between women and men. Woolfe mentions "...when a woman speaks to women she should have something very unpleasant up her sleeve. Women are hard on women. Women dislike women. Women - but are you not sick to death of the word?" This ties into the concept of the "Other" in a sort-of-reverse manner. In this particular case, we are led to believe that the women are not the "Other" or literary "the one". The previous quote lays claim that, that is not the case. So, in fact, women would be "the one" and the male counterpart would be classified as the "Other." Jacques Lacan spoke of the "Other" in terms of... "...the very place called upon by a recourse to speech in any relation where it intervenes. If it speaks in the Other, whether or not the subject hears it with his own ears, it is because it is there that the subject, according to logic prior to any awakening." Using Lacan's description, I am once again reinforcing that Woolfe is describing women as the "one" and men as the "Other."

A Room of One's Own is a masterpiece of literature. Virginia Woolf beautifully weaves this story using many different literary devices. The main literary device that stands out is her usage of antithesis and how she employs it and ties it into a flawless rave of rhetoric's. Finally, she concludes this work of art with the literary element of the "other" nicely tying everything together and allowing the reader to make his or her own judgments about the types of challenges faced by female writers. In the end...Woolf's room of her own, gave her a voice of her own.

Bibliography

Castle, Terry. Boss Ladies, Watch Out!: Essays on Women, Sex, and Writing. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Felski, Rita. Literature after Feminism. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003. Print.

"Kentucky Classics." University of Kentucky - Welcome to the University of Kentucky. Web. 02 Mar. 2011. .

Kirkham, Margaret. Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction. Sussex: Harvester, 1983. Print.

Kolodny, Annette. "Some Notes On Defining A "Feminist Literary Criticism"" 1975. Feminist Criticism: Essays on Theory, Poetry and Prose. USA, 1978. 37-58. Print.

Lacan, Jacques. The Meaning of the Phallus. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. Print.