British and Romantic Victorian Cultures

Stacey on Romantic, Victorian and Modern British Literature (MU ENG264-Dr. J. Glance)
References: Longman Anthology of British Literature, 2nd Compact Ed., Vol. B., (2003).


Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
“Women and the fiction that is written about them”
-Virginia Woolf
from A Room of One’s Own, Chapter 1

Could Virginia Woolf’s life story be the reason she rejected Victorian ideals? Her “own roots went deep in Victorian literary culture” (Longman, p.1222). I believe it was because she was denied a formal education and it is stated that “the sense of having been deliberately shut out of education by virtue of her sex was to inflect all of Woolf’s writing and thinking”(Longman, p.1223).
It seems only natural that Woolf (the quintessential victim of sexism by her brothers’ objectification and incest) would reject the Victorian leaning of group-think (hypocritical) morality. How immoral a society that would dismiss the self-determination of their members and allow the oppression of so many of their members; specifically women?

Woolf’s stance in A Room of One’s Own (that a woman writer needs her own room and money) reflects her understanding that as long as women are financially-disadvantaged, they will continue to be at a disadvantage both educationally and socially.