Gender Theory and a Room of One’s Own By Virginia Woolf

Özet

This paper looks into the notion of gender and the gender role of women in the context of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929), but also in her novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Virginia Woolf laid the foundation for feminist theory by pointing out the marginalized position of women in society and literature through her novels and critical essays. She also questioned the idea of gender, and characterized it as an ideologically structured and socially controlled idea, which would later become the basis of gender theory. Virginia Woolf also emphasized the role of language in constructing identity and was among the first to draw attention to the importance of the concept that would later be called “women’s writing”/”feminine writing”. In her essay A Room of One’s Own, which many feminist theorists consider the first manifesto of modern feminist theory, Woolf shows the relationship between the sexes based on her own experience, and in particular deals with the issue of women in literature, thus opening up and problematizing some of the basic themes of feminism together with her overall work.