A Room of One's Own Chapter 2 Question

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Do you think women’s suffering in society is more of a product of their defeatist attitude or of male dominance? Analyze how your belief is evident in the novel and in real life.

I belief that the problem lies with both genders. Men have considered themselves superior be-cause of sexual practices, not being burden by childbearing, and physically stronger. They have used this belief to secure themselves the best jobs, top government positions, and the dominant gender in society. Men continue to exert this idea throughout history, from the Napoleonic Code and Mussolini’s views of women. Napoleon’s code established male dominance of the household while Mussolini restricted women to the home to produce babies. In the novel, male scholars kick Virginia Woolf off the grass, disrupting her train of thought. Men also prevent Woolf from visiting the library. However, most women have accepted this secondary position. Some women, like the women’s suffrage movement, have rebelled against the male dominant society and have established real gains. However, most women adhere to the males, reproduc-ing with them despite their arrogance. Women continue to stay at home while their husbands work, taking sole responsibility of the children that both of them had an equal part in making. After women achieved suffrage in numerous countries, including the United States in 1920, the momentum ran out of the women’s movement, as women thought they had met their goal. However, after de jure prohibitions, de facto prohibitions became the norm. Women expe-rienced the glass ceiling, where they could see the top of the social ladder but could not reach it. Men were the glass, what had prevented women from achieving equality with men. In the novel, the women challenge Oxbridge’s elitism by creating their own female college; however, the women’s college is hindered by lack of enthusiastic support.