When first reading “From a Room of one’s Own” by Virginia Wolff I thought the title should have been renamed as “True Detective” featuring Virginia Wolff. She seemed to be solving a case rather then writing a literary work. Although,by the second chapter Virginia wolf started to make valid meaningful points on how women were being oppressed due to men seeing themselves as superior and how women were being forced into a life of poverty where they were forced into a life of survival instead of having a life of meaning. But there was one point which I had to question and that was did men really oppress women because they saw them as mirrors? I mean its obvious that women are being oppressed but is it because men see themselves as heroes in the way women are forced to rely or worship them and is that the reason they feel the need to force them into a role of inferiority. The reason I question this motive is because I always believed that oppression was founded on differences rather than their likeness in their victims. For example slavery was practiced on black men as well as black women. In these times black were compared to monkeys and were looked as the low of the low. Considering these circumstances it would be difficult to see the men during these times seeing their reflection in people they considered no better than animals. In this case wouldn’t superiority arise from looking different than those who you see are in a lower status? This could be said the same for women even though they may be the same race as their oppressor they are biologically different. Maybe this difference is what enables the oppressor to feel superior to women. By keeping a sex that looks different than you in poverty you can then justify your superiority in that said difference. For example the belief that their not as strong and their not as hairy so our sex must somehow be better .Furthermore if women were mirrors to men then wouldn’t it be more reasonable to build them up then tear them down because the better the mirror the sharper you look.
All posts by ed158376
Notes From the UnderGround Part 1- Who is this guy?
At first look at “Notes From the Underground” your first impression, probably like mine, is why am I reading the musings of a madman. The only thing that the reader can decipher about the author in the first few pages is that he is a liar.He lies about being a bad guy,good guy and he laughs far to much for comfort. His constant effort to portray himself as a overall bad guy just to turn around and tell his audience,who are now probably thoroughly convinced of his depravity, that he is actually decent reminds one of the famous words of a wise butler who said “some men just want to see the world burn”. His frequent lies and deception not only succeeds in not only having his audience lose confidence in him but his sanity.
Although, amazingly as he develops his position that free will should never be replaced by reason as a primary aspect of humanity we see that Fyodor is actually a lover of life itself. This is primarily shown in his example of the mouse who suffers immeasurably through the pursuit of vengeance to never realize it in the end. This mouse is a perfect representative for everything that Fyodor argues about in this passage ,because even though it makes no sense for this mouse to struggle for so little the mouse is still living and experiencing adventures in pursuit of its vengeance. Although if reason were to play a part the mouse,now accepting the futility of it all, would not do anything except accept its fate and wait for death or Jerry to come.
In relation to humanity I agree completely with Fyodor we humans need something to do with ourselves that makes us feel complete.The idea of perfect reason sounds nice on paper but its appliance to the real world is ironically unrealistic, are we supposed to accept the fact that there will always be racism in the world and accept all injustices, or are we supposed to fight it despite any “stone walls”. Back to the original question of who Fyodor is, I believe that in the end he is not a liar but a practitioner of his own beliefs. For instance it doesnt make sense to undermine your credibility in a argumentative piece or to laugh in the middle of your sentences, but like Fyodor’s whole point it’s not about if the ending makes sense but how you feel in the pursuit of it.