The Study Of Woolf's Feminist Theory

Virginia Woolf was a prolific English novelist, essayist and literary critic in the twentieth century. She published 12 full-length fictions, over 350 critic essays and 2 feminist theoretical works, which finds its full expression in her feminist works: Three Old Coins, A Room of One's Own ,and which also scatters in her other random essays and fictions. Virginia Woolf, a daughter of an educated couple, while seeking her economic independence by writing, looked into women's political status and economic conditions. Thus she was able to elaborate on the relation between women and war, women and culture, as well as women and literature, which led to her systematic theory on feminist literature. In this dissertation, a preliminary exploration will be made on Virginia Woolf's feminist thought in terms of feminist's views of war, of economy, and of literature.Virginia Woolf expounded the relation between women and war from the perspective of war and politics, war and culture and war and sex.. In this she revealed in a patriarchy society women's political submission, cultural slavery, and sexual distinction; also in this society she exposed male hegemony and male vanity. She attributed the cause for the outbreak of war to the fascism in male subconsciousness . She stated the effective ways to stop the war and expressed her longing for peaceful co-existence between the two sexes and for world peace .