Welcome to Module 8! (2.5 – 3 hours)
Here’s what you need to do by next class:
- Start working on your project outline, which we will use for a peer-review activity on Tuesday, April 26th, and which you will send to my email after revision, by April 29th, 11:59pm. Instructions are under Assessment (main menu).
- Read from the Anthology:
– “Modernity and Modernism” (9 pages)
– A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf, 1929, Chapter 2 (9 pages inc. author intro) also available here. - Watch the lecture below (in two parts).
- Come up with one question about the readings and write it in the comments below: Has anything confused you? Struck you? Awed you? Revolted you? Interested you, in any way? We will use your questions for discussion in class.
NB: you can’t write the same question as anyone else that has already commented before you. - Fill out the exit ticket for this lecture so I can count your participation.
- Your project outline is due for use in class on April 26th. We will swap them in class and peer-review them in pairs. Then, you will revise your outline as per your classmate’s feedback and submit it to me by the end of the day on May 2nd, by email. The outline instructions are the same for all project formats.
During this module’s week, so that you leave yourself enough time to work on your outline over the break, please watch the video instructions for the outline here. You can come back to this video anytime, as it is located at the bottom of the Methodology page.
Here is Part 1 of the lecture (captions included):
Here is Part 2 of the lecture (captions included):
Below are the PDF slides (the last two slides, on outline methodology, are explained in this video (also under Methodolohy, Main Menu):
Wanna do more?
- Crash Course European History on Modern Thought an Culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjpTjeGuZc&ab_channel=CrashCourse
- A Room of One’s Own is an essay, even if it sounds quite different from an academic one. But it has a strong thesis statement, doesn’t it? Here’s some advice on how to write a strong thesis statement yourself, when the time comes (quite soon!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx-Blaix9uU&ab_channel=Chegg
- The trailer to The Hours, by dir. Stephen Daldry (2002) with Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Dj-v7L7RI&ab_channel=MarcusWrightHeroe
- The trailer to Mrs Dalloway, by dir. Marleen Gorris (1997) with Vanessa Redgrave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Iv7r-aRWs&ab_channel=mostern
- An article about the current polemic on Virginia Woolf and her addition to a “racism list” by Camden Council, cancel culture, etc. : https://unherd.com/thepost/virginia-woolf-predicted-her-own-cancellation/
- The trailer to the film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” by Ernest Lehman, 1966, with Elizabth Taylor and Richard Burton, adapted from Edward Albee’s 1962 eponymous play, and on the theme of the difficulties of marriage. (The title is a pun on the nursery rhyme “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vIUGN8CGjE&ab_channel=MovieclipsClassicTrailers
Feel free to write a second comment or reply to any of your classmates’ comments if you feel like saying anything else about the module content 🙂
From the reading, would you say that Woolf’s predictions of women’s roles in the future are accurate?
The biggest thing I have noticed in this chapter is that men, overall, is seen as the problem. Mary notices that men feel overly superior over women, and it makes me wonder….. was the mindset of men the problem within society? And was the change in this mindset what set off the change for women inclusivity and women’s rights? Was it all just up to men?
That is an excellent question, Kadija! A way of answering that is to look at all the conceptions of woemn by men. To a large exten, women are seen as invented by men and for men. Look at all the female heroines by male writers (Flaubert’s Bovary, Tolstoy’s Karenina… All stems from the Bible’s idea that Eve is taken from the rib of Adam. Then, compare that to women depicted by women, though there are less examples of that (Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March, Bronte’s Jane Eyre…). It’s a huge difference, and our society is starting to see it, but for so long, women were just seen as appendices of men. A nuance though, is that some epochs saw more feminism and female freedom than others, just in different ways than we have it today (think women warriors in the first millenium, or some really special medieval women). Brillant comment, thanks for sharing!
The history of male opposition to female liberation seems to be more interesting than the process of female liberation itself. I am grateful to have been born in a time when women were able to be educated and think independently. In a sense, labeling this book as feminist seems to go against the author’s intention. Woolf emphasizes more the freedom of being human than the buried and devalued history of women in the past. Women should not be angry in the face of oppression; responding to anger would hinder what should be freedom, and by the same token, men should not be mad when the changing status of the opposite sex. The differences between the two sexes cannot be avoided and should be combined.
How prevelant are gender inequality issues globally today? What evidences is there?
Why is there such a huge difference between men and women? What makes society think that men are always better than women?
I’d say fear, but that’s just one of the possiblities.
Men have written most of the books about women in the library. What other groups do you believe have had little to no say in their own history?
Woolf is able to convey her anger with the way women are treated and viewed and even goes as far as to analogize the anger or fear rich people feel towards the possibilities of those who are poorer seizing their wealth. Would those who are not only upperclass but also view women in the same way Woolf described to hate, be affected by her words and possibly feel she is talking directly to them? And what would be their message back to her?
How have things changed in the world for woman’s rights and the overall view on woman today? And what issues that Woolf bring up in her text still remain today even after almost 90 years?
How did society react to Woolf’s essay?
Woolf seems to know before she opens the book that she won’t find the answer to her question, where and how will she get the answer?
I think that’s on purpose, it’s a figure of counterargumentation that strenghtens her own point.
How similar is modernism and realism?
Is the essay itself making a remark about the kinds of fiction-writing women might accomplish given that Woolf is a woman?
Thank you all for your questions!