Sociology and Women Essay examples

Submitted By CheyenneDarro
Words: 413
Pages: 2

Of the sections in this module, "Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf, I feel, is a strong piece that both directly and indirectly criticize society. Virginia Woolf's essay was pointed at the era in which she lived and the standards for women, strongly focused on the oppression forced upon women of this time. During the Victorian esque era in which she wrote this, women were not meant to have an education to the equivalent of a man, nor were they to work for themselves. Women of this time were solely supposed to provide for their significant other, to raise children, and to be a homemaker, thus the come about of the "Angel in the house" i.e. the ideal women. Women were not meant to think or act for themselves and this is of what Woolf conflicts with throughout her essay, how a woman was to be charming and sympathetique. A tormented idea that women were that and only that, a kind and gentle being. Though there is nothing wrong with those qualities, Woolf expresses her frustration in not wanting to be held to those idealistic stereotypes. "Professions for Women" is a criticism of society because it exposes the oppression that women were forced into. Society as a whole at this time had made holding women to these lesser standards okay, making women feel that those standards are what they should aspire to be. It was engrained into culture that women can have ambition, but not so much to threaten a man, or endanger his greater self-worth. To make life choices based around the need to marry: an aspiration in which women are raised to