I love Virginia Woolf. I've spent a lot of time with her: I've read almost everything she's written, and she was the topic of my master's thesis. I admire her style, her honesty, her rejection of tradition--both in writing and her personal life.
But should she be held up as the epitome of feminism? Of feminist authors? The Huffington Post's Maddie Crum recently wrote an article titled Why Virginia Woolf Should Be Your Feminist Role Model", giving several reasons why Woolf should hold that title. And while I do agree with a lot of what she says (although mentioning fluid gender roles without mentioning Orlando seems rather short-sighted), I also have some serious reservations.
For all of her wonderful, progressive points, Woolf was very much a product of her time. As adamant as she was that women needed space and money to pursue their creative lives, she really was only speaking of a certain economic class of women. White women. And Christian. Woolf, unfortunately, expressed very classist, racist, and anti-Semitic views while also advocating for women's autonomy and creative freedom.
These are difficult contradictions to reconcile, especially when women of color and women in lower economic situations have felt ostracized by mainstream feminism. It hasn't always been inclusive; it isn't always inclusive today. If we truly believe that feminism is equality, it has to mean equality in all realms. It has to also include income equality, education, reproductive justice, racial and LGBTQ rights. Feminism can, and should, be something everyone is proud of and works toward, not something that continues to make certain segments of society feel ostracized.
If we just look at Virginia Woolf as an advocate for advancing women's positions in life and giving them opportunities to express themselves creatively, then I think, yes, she is a good role model. Alice Walker (who is one of my favorite authors) references Woolf in her essay, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. In that essay, Walker mentions that for far too long women, especially women of color, had to find subversive ways to express themselves--in quilts, flower gardens and the walls of their homes. They were as anonymous as Woolf's Shakespearean sister, doomed to a life of obscurity because of their gender and race. It is our duty to resurrect those lives as best we can, as Woolf did for the fictional sister of Shakespeare and Walker did for Zora Neale Hurston, to more fully embrace our heritage.
Perhaps we don't have to expect everything from our role models. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, try to learn from them, and move on. Roxane Gay would call that being a "bad feminist." No one is a perfect feminist--most days we can't even completely agree on what that means. We attempt to live our lives as best we can, but we're going to fail. Because at the end of the day, we're all human.
I'd like to think that if Woolf lived today, she would be more open to helping her sisters of all stripes. Even so, for all of her faults, she does have important words for us all as we strive toward a more equal world for all women.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Rabbit Hole #7: New Harper Lee novel and Whistling Vivaldi
Um, biggest news right now in the book world? Harper Lee has a new book coming out. Not only that, but the much-loved, seldom-seen writer's second novel is a sequel of sorts to To Kill a Mockingbird. When this news was announced on Tuesday, my Twitter feed pretty much looked like this:
It's not every day a reclusive writer comes out with a new work, and even rarer that it's a sequel to one of the most beloved books of all time. (To be fair, she did write this work before Mockingbird, but it's still a sequel!)
This news isn't without controversy, however. There are people who are genuinely worried that Lee was tricked into publishing this book, given her declining health. There are others who are worried it won't live up to Mockingbird. As far as the first concern goes, I, for one, desperately hope the reports that Lee is happy about publishing Go, Set a Watchman are true. The thought that someone would exploit her for financial gain makes my stomach churn. The second concern also has merits: rarely to do sequels live up to the original work.
Hopefully, we'll have some clearer answers on the first concern soon. We'll have to wait until summer to answer that second question: Go, Set a Watchman comes out July 14.
In other news, I just finished Claude M. Steele's Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. I don't normally read sociology books, unless they deal with women's issues, but this particular book was fascinating. Steele's claim is that stereotypes can affect us, even if we are not consciously aware of being stereotyped. Because our culture labels and groups everyone, we all have contingencies that are in the back of our minds and acting on our lives every day. Women are not smart at math and science, blacks aren't as intelligent as whites, whites aren't as athletic, men aren't sensitive--all of these contingencies can not only affect the interactions we have with each other, but our own performance in areas as well.
Whistling Vivaldi did bog down for me when Steele was describing the scientific methods he and his team used, but the examples/experiments he discusses as well as the implications for our society were intriguing. And as a teacher, trying minimizing the stereotype threats in my classroom as much as possible to help my students achieve is definitely something I will be focusing on. Well worth the read!
gif courtesy of mashable.com
It's not every day a reclusive writer comes out with a new work, and even rarer that it's a sequel to one of the most beloved books of all time. (To be fair, she did write this work before Mockingbird, but it's still a sequel!)
This news isn't without controversy, however. There are people who are genuinely worried that Lee was tricked into publishing this book, given her declining health. There are others who are worried it won't live up to Mockingbird. As far as the first concern goes, I, for one, desperately hope the reports that Lee is happy about publishing Go, Set a Watchman are true. The thought that someone would exploit her for financial gain makes my stomach churn. The second concern also has merits: rarely to do sequels live up to the original work.
Hopefully, we'll have some clearer answers on the first concern soon. We'll have to wait until summer to answer that second question: Go, Set a Watchman comes out July 14.
In other news, I just finished Claude M. Steele's Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. I don't normally read sociology books, unless they deal with women's issues, but this particular book was fascinating. Steele's claim is that stereotypes can affect us, even if we are not consciously aware of being stereotyped. Because our culture labels and groups everyone, we all have contingencies that are in the back of our minds and acting on our lives every day. Women are not smart at math and science, blacks aren't as intelligent as whites, whites aren't as athletic, men aren't sensitive--all of these contingencies can not only affect the interactions we have with each other, but our own performance in areas as well.
Whistling Vivaldi did bog down for me when Steele was describing the scientific methods he and his team used, but the examples/experiments he discusses as well as the implications for our society were intriguing. And as a teacher, trying minimizing the stereotype threats in my classroom as much as possible to help my students achieve is definitely something I will be focusing on. Well worth the read!
Monday, February 2, 2015
Rabbit Hole #6: The Bone People by Keri Hulme
I just finished Keri Hulme's The Bone People last night, and all I can say is, wow. It was so amazingly complex, with tragic characters, magical realism, Maori legends, and a decidedly modernist feel to it.
The Bone People is the story of three individuals set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand. Each of these people is damaged by their pasts: Kerewin is a painter and loner who has built the Tower for herself to live in; Simon is an orphan who was found washed up on the beach and has no verbal skills, although he can read and write better than many older children; Joe Gillayley is a laborer who has brought Simon in, but is as destructive to the boy as he is loving. These three find each other when Simon breaks into the Tower, only to be discovered by Kerewin. It's not your typical man meets woman--they fall in love--happily ever after story, though. These three become even more bruised and battered throughout the novel than they were to begin with, and even the connections between them can't undo that.
The style is a throw-back to the great modernists of the early twentieth-century. It's not always easy to tell who is speaking or thinking. Hulme uses the space of the page to dictate those changes, rather than punctuation. (Hulme even has a note at the beginning thanking her editor for trusting her and allowing her to tell the story the way she wanted.) Even though the style may take some getting used to, once you do, it's easy to see why she created the text in this way.
This 1985 Booker Prize winner (and first novel) absolutely wrecked me. To be honest, I really didn't like any of the characters; even the young Simon tries his best to hurt others and make it difficult for the reader to connect with him. But even though I didn't particularly like anyone, I still found myself rooting for them. And THAT is the sign of a good writer: making you care about characters that don't deserve it. I'm definitely going to be checking out more of her work.
The Bone People is the story of three individuals set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand. Each of these people is damaged by their pasts: Kerewin is a painter and loner who has built the Tower for herself to live in; Simon is an orphan who was found washed up on the beach and has no verbal skills, although he can read and write better than many older children; Joe Gillayley is a laborer who has brought Simon in, but is as destructive to the boy as he is loving. These three find each other when Simon breaks into the Tower, only to be discovered by Kerewin. It's not your typical man meets woman--they fall in love--happily ever after story, though. These three become even more bruised and battered throughout the novel than they were to begin with, and even the connections between them can't undo that.
The style is a throw-back to the great modernists of the early twentieth-century. It's not always easy to tell who is speaking or thinking. Hulme uses the space of the page to dictate those changes, rather than punctuation. (Hulme even has a note at the beginning thanking her editor for trusting her and allowing her to tell the story the way she wanted.) Even though the style may take some getting used to, once you do, it's easy to see why she created the text in this way.
This 1985 Booker Prize winner (and first novel) absolutely wrecked me. To be honest, I really didn't like any of the characters; even the young Simon tries his best to hurt others and make it difficult for the reader to connect with him. But even though I didn't particularly like anyone, I still found myself rooting for them. And THAT is the sign of a good writer: making you care about characters that don't deserve it. I'm definitely going to be checking out more of her work.
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