March Monthly Connection

In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf makes many great points about women in literature but the one that really stuck out to me was the fact that fiction suffered because women had to hide what they were writing.  If a man wanted to write, nobody would think anything of it.  He would be encouraged to follow his dreams and given all the privacy he needed to create his masterpieces.  The same could not be said for women.  A woman could never be accepted as a writer and was certainly never encouraged or given a room of her own to create.  She would have to do it secretly whenever she had time and deal with interruptions.  Jane Austen and the Brontes had to keep their novels a secret and there are times in the storyline, according to Woolf, where you can tell the writer was interrupted.  It is impossible to know how great those stories could have been if the women were free to write as they wished.

This is seen in society today to an extent.  There are things that we deem masculine and feminine and have trouble accepting the other sex doing them.  If a little boy said they wanted to be a pro football player when he was older, nobody would think anything of it.  But if a little girl said the same, it would seem ridiculous.  The same thing would happen if a boy said he wanted to dance ballet.  We have standards for what is expected of both sexes today just like back then, it is just a little better now.  This actually reminds me of Ella Enchanted.  The elf is expected to be an entertainer because that's what all other elves are, but he wants to be a lawyer.  None of the other elves support his wishes they just want him to do what is expected.

I don't agree with the standards we set for ourselves as a society.  The world no doubt missed out on so many great works of literature from women because they were never allowed to write it.  There are so many untold stories and unexpressed geniuses that we will never see because we have standards of behavior for men and women.