The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

71 When Virginia Woolf gave her speech, women had only begun to choose occupations for themselves outside the home. It is no secret that, prior to this time, a woman’s place was viewed to be in the home rather than in the workplace with a career. She was supposed to put everyone else’s needs above her own. Although times were changing, this image of women pervaded. This explains the existence of the first obstacle that Woolf exposed: “The Angel in the House” (Woolf, 2005, P. 349) 1 . She described the Angel in the House as a “phantom” who was “intensely sympathetic,” “immensely charming,” and “utterly unselfish.” She “excelled in the difficult arts of family life” and “sacrificed herself daily.” Furthermore, she “preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others” rather than have “a mind or wish of her own” and—most importantly—was “pure” (P. 349-350). The Angel in the House appears to be none other than the ideal, turn-of-the- century housewife. This phantom of outdated values “bothered” and “tormented” Woolf to such a great extent that she “turned upon her and caught her by the throat” (P. 350). “Had I not killed her she would have killed me,” Woolf reasoned in “self-defense” (P. 350). Through vivid and dramatic descriptions, Woolf made it clear that the Angel in the House was no longer an obstacle that women in her day need face. The idea of what a woman should be and should do was shifting, and the phantom was being trampled in the process. Whereas the women in Woolf’s day battled with the phantom, women in the modern age have undoubtedly never experienced such a phantom. Nowadays women are encouraged to develop dreams and goals for their lives and to take the necessary steps to accomplish them. It can be argued that the modern woman is the antithesis of the Angel in the House. Clearly, professional women today do not face the challenge of the Angel in the House. The second challenge that Woolf addressed was one that was more specific to women in the profession of writing than to women in other professions, but the barrier it created was significant nonetheless. According to Woolf, female writers had to overcome the challenge of “telling the truth about [their] own experience[s] as [bodies]” (P. 352). In Woolf’s day, it was “unfitting for her as 1 The rest of the citations in this essay refer to Virginia Woolf’s speech- turned-essay, Professions for Women, which was edited by Jane E. Aaron and published in 40 Model Essays: A Portable Anthology in 2005.