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  • Essay / Virginia Woolf's Feminist Ideas and Their Connection to The Color Purple by Alice Walker

    Table of ContentsSummaryIntroductionDiscussionConclusionSummaryIn this essay, Virginia Woolf's feminist theories are examined and analyzed, as well as connected to the famous novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Woolf presents the theories that women's economic and social freedom are crucial to women's advancement in society in her long essay A Room of One's Own. This essay explores Woolf's ideas and draws parallels with Walker's novel and Woolf's insights and understanding of her theories, using current scholarship on the subject. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIntroductionVirginia Woolf writes: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” in his essay A Room of His Own. Thus Woolf launches a conundrum of ideas that women need economic and social freedom to progress in society and rise as equals to men. A room of one's own does not only refer to a literal room, but also a figurative room that allows the woman to have a space of her own. In other words, a woman's need for independence. “The only accusation I could make against the fellows and scholars of whatever college was that, to protect their territory, which had been rolled over for 300 years in a row, they had sent my little fish into hiding. » (Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. 1929: 4)1Woolf's quote represents the close connection between her work and the differences in higher education between men and women at the time, the latter being lower than the education of men. This highlights Woolf's point that women's ideas and thoughts were oppressed by society, which further suppressed women's progress. This nourishes the belief that women need their freedom to flourish and empower themselves outside of female isolation. “Allowing women to gain greater economic influence allows them to push for social change, which leads to political and legal changes. » Chelsea Follet (2017) 3Studies have been done nowadays linking women's empowerment and freedom to their economic status and how economic freedom would in turn lead to social freedom. Chelsea Follet writes in FFE that to solve women's social problems, they need their own private economy, in order to acquire social freedom and in turn become part of a working society. DiscussionAlice Walker's famous novel The Color Purple gives us many examples of what Woolf's theories are based on. Celie and Shug Avery, the novel's two opposites, comfort each other to reinforce the novel's clear feminist thoughts. “I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I'm alive. » (Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. 1982: 22) Celie represents all the struggles of women in the novel of the time. It is about a young girl who, at a very young age, gave up all fight to improve her own life, because she had no happiness in her life. Celie has no freedom, neither social nor economic, which many women did not have in the 1930s. As a woman, Celie had to become a wife and a mother, who took care of the children and the household . These strict structures governed by society did not allow women like Célie to work to gain economic independence. In turn, Celie had two domineering and abusive patriarchs in her life who denied her social freedom, first her stepfather, then.