Prepping for a Feminist Thought Class

Ok, just one more pic from last night. My Sunset Beach drink was every bit as tasty as it looks.

You know how I keep harping about the (exciting! wonderful!) fact that I'm taking two Lit classes very soon? Well, one of them is a Feminist Thought class. I'm earning a graduate certificate in Gender and Women's Studies, so this class kills two academic birds with one stone. Also? I know about feminism in general, but not so much about how it has appeared within literature at large, so I'm looking forward to learning about that.

G is convinced this class will turn me into a man hater and force him to tip toe around his own house. Apparently he thinks I'm incapable of independent thought and our 13.5 years of marriage will quickly fade into the background while I'm burning bras and trashing his XBox...

So, in thinking about the upcoming class, I read Virginia Woolf's essay, "A Room of One's Own." This is yet another classic that I have never read before. Sometimes I wonder what I actually did read as an English undergraduate major, besides Shakespeare, but anyhoo.

As you probably already know, this essay is actually a combination of essays she wrote to present at conferences about women and literature. It's part history, part socio-economic commentary, part philosophy, part art. She posits that in order for a person - but really, for a woman - to be freed up to think about and subsequently write literature, she will need about 500 pounds a year (i.e. a semblance of financial autonomy) and a room of her own (as opposed to sitting in the family room, surrounded by children and duties and expectations and interruptions). A famous part of this essay is Woolf's theory about what would have happened to Shakespeare's hypothetical sister if she had had the abilities and desires he had, and tried to professionally implement them in London. Needless to say, it would have turned out much differently and most likely tragically.

I'm really glad I finally read this, and I plan to read Mrs. Dalloway sometime soon, hopefully before school starts. One note - in this essay, Woolf does not come across as a man hater. She's quite frank about the realities of her time and the past concerning gender equality (or the lack thereof) but she is also very clear in her belief that art and writing takes both sexes, and something is missing when women are not represented, or if there is a mistaken belief that men, and men only, can adequately represent women.

OK, I must go prepare for tutoring, which means at some point today I'm going to have to get out of these pj's. **sigh**