1. Choose a social issue and discuss how the treatment of that issue has or has not changed over time in the literature that we have read. Examples could include poverty, war, crime, or discrimination against people based on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, etc. You are not limited to those examples!
The struggle for equal rights between man and woman seems a timeless battle, but I think is, in particular, a rich aspect of early Twentieth Century politics and literature. In political terms, the suffrage movement is a crucial part of this history. One could argue that without this political voice and right, women had absolutely no political voice. I believe that the 1918 suffrage movement in Great Britain, where women thirty years and above were given the power of a political vote, changed female driven literature in very meaningful ways.
One of the most influential female writers of this time, which typified these changes in the female voice, is Virginia Woolf. I believe that her interjection of stream of consciousness writing was a profoundly different experience and contribution of female authors. This seemingly subtle shift in narration was anything but slight. Stream of consciousness narration can be argued as part of the battle for equality between men and women. What I mean by this is that this new form of intimate, internal dialogue gave voice to the inner workings of women and, at least sometimes, placed them on the same platform as the dominant male voice.
There are other power dynamic shifts, with this adjustment of narration. One could argue that authors like Virginia Woolf demanded the importance of women’s thoughts and that women had the right to emanate such personal emotion, instead of having an external voice deem what is significant and what is not. However, Woolf is an intriguing author because she does not always reveal the female voice as elevated, but shows the effects of superficial society on the mind of women. Woolf seems to shed light on what is lacking as well, and with this, beckons women to rise, to elevate to something of respect. I sensed this summoning in Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street. With questions like, “How then could women sit in Parliament? How could they do things with men?” Woolf brings attention to the inner workings of a very engineered female mind. One that cannot step outside of only being a companion to man, and not a political rival or partner. There is a friction that Woolf seems to put in place, which shows the shallow depths of the well-groomed female pet and the harshness of reality lost to her. With this friction she creates, Woolf seems to be quietly calling to women, and asking them to wake to their power and wriggle free from the confines of a very short societal leash.
Brit Lit 2020 