A Feminist Study Of A Room Of One's Own

Virginia Woolf is a famous British woman writer, critic and one of the representatives of stream of consciousness in the twentieth century. She is highly praised as the pioneer of feminism. A Room of One's Own, being her longest literary criticism, is the first modern primer for feminist literary criticism. This thesis adopts a feminist point of view to analyze women's mental growth under the patriarchal society and explores the patriarchal oppression on women and the efforts women have made to resist against this oppression.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction to Virginia Woolf, her literary career, and the studies of her work in China and in England. The second chapter mainly states feminist theory, the importance of the work in the literary history, and the patriarchal domination over women reflected in this work. The third chapter explores the deep-seated reasons for the patriarchal domination and certain approaches women have taken for the overthrow of the patriarchal institution. Different branches of feminist theory are adopted to analyze various problems that women are confronted with in the patriarchal ideology. The fourth chapter demonstrates the reinforcement of feminist ideology under the guidance of androgyny, and it expands that the concept of androgyny might also exert influence on gender roles people play in society and at home. The last chapter summarizes women's mental growth in A Room of One's Own, and it puts forward the wish that this thesis might render a new perspective for future research on A Room of One's Own.