Research Paper on "Room of One's Own -- Magical Realism"

Research Paper 4 pages (1474 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Room of One's Own -- Magical Realism and the Power of Gender

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay based on a series of lectures Virginia Woolf gave at Cambridge University in 1928. It was published in 1929, and explores the way in which women are integrated into fiction and history, and offers an interesting juxtaposition on the literal and figurative manner in which society is traditionally dominated by patriarchal themes. In addition to the theme of education, literature, a woman's position within society, and gender sexuality; there is a subtheme of modernity and magical realism that permeates each set of examples and ties the work together -- with perhaps the magic being a way of relooking at the world through gender neutral glasses. Virginia Woolf herself was an English author, essayist and one of the foremost in modern literary work and especially feminist viewpoints. The famous dictum, actually from A Room of One's Own, is "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction," which says a great deal about the way that society seemed to view and oppress intellectual women. She was most active during the World War I years and up until depression and World War II simply overwhelmed her. In fact, On March 28, 1941, after a particularly nasty experience with the Blitz, Wolf filler her overcoat with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse (Rose, 1986). The irony of her life in combination with the theme of magical realism can also be seen in her final letter to her husband:

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that -- everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been (Rose, p. 243).

Woolf and Modernism - Modernism, in its most basic sense, is a reaction to romanticism and classicism; the strict rules of art and the overly emotive forms and themes so popular in the late 19th century. Romanticism began as a reaction -- not so much against anything concrete, more as a result of social moods of the time-period. In music it was a way to expand Classical "rules," harmonies, and forms of expression; in literature and poetry a broad range of reactions towards pieces that were too formal. As an artistic movement, then, romanticism meant many things, but focused on nature, the meaning and exploration of the self, the idea that it was permissible to bend the rules of society in order to engender self-actualization, and the freedom to challenge authority and reason. In music, this was epitomized in the world of Swan Lake, in poetry, the great romantics of Keats and Shelley. However, the turn of the century caused a break in the artistic work -- a tradition of emotions moving towards a more analytical approach to technique, logic, and a theme that challenges the world as being hierarchical, organized, and patriarchal. Instead, it is anti-elite, and all the trappings of society that seem to go with formal classical music or art, and is a celebration of the shocking. One could say it is intellectual art, but then that would imply that there was a larger purpose, something to learn, and something profound to think about, to analyze, that would change one's being by experiencing it (Humm, 2003).

Woolf and Magical Realism- One of the most interesting trends in modern literature… READ MORE

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