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Claribel Pena
Professor Zarzar
ENG 2850
22 November 2016
Virginia Woolf starting in the middle
Virgina Woolf, the woman who wrote A Room of One’s Own, showed many
different aspects of how women were treated and how their roles in society were
portrayed. During the 1800’s women were seen as the person who has to stay home, do
the cleaning, cooking and taking care of the children. The women’s social status was
under the men. Women would have to be the one listening to the men and they would
have a hard time expressing what they feel. In this particular reading Woolf began her
essay in an unusual way any common literature would start, which will be discussed.
Also, there were a few instances where Woolf would trespass different places where
women were not allowed to go to, which has a great significance to how women had to
live. Lastly, there were a few fictional stories that were told to show the reader
understand more how things were back then. Women were limited to doing a lot of things
that they wanted to do, but they were seen as people with little importance, which this
story shows.
In the beginning Virginia Woolf used the technique of starting her work in media
res meaning “in the middle of things” as shown here, “But, you may say, we asked you to
speak of women and fiction” (Woolf, pg.339). As shown in the quote Woolf starts with
the word “But,” which is usually used in the middle of the sentence to connect the
beginning with the end. The fact that women do not get the attention that they deserve
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they deserve causes them to have to interrupt men or just the normal social status of
society. Women would have to do things for themselves just so they show that they are
important. There was a sentence in the story where Woolf would say things like women
were not important in a sarcastic way, like it says here, “Here then was I (call me Mary
Betson…or by any name you please – it is not of any importance)” on page 340. That is a
perfect example of how men would see women or maybe sometimes some women would
even think of them as little importance themselves, which shouldn’t be like that. Back to
the point where Woolf used the work “but” to start a sentence, just shows that women
have think for themselves and put themselves first, so history would not keep repeating
itself and have men stay in power. Woolf questions and thinks of different things about
the situation women put themselves in and ask why. One example of this is on page 349,
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