Virginia Woolf: The Pioneer Of Feminist Criticism

The flowering of the theory of feminism is connected with feminist movements cohesively. It's the fruitage of political movements which deeply into the area of culture. In 1791, the woman leader in France called De Gucht polemicized the famous《Feminist declaration》.Around this time or so,Mary who was in England wrote the《Feminist defense》,bringing forward the rights of women.These preparations in theory set a firm basis for further progress in posterity feminism. From this point of view, the appearance of Virginia Woolf is inaccident .As the blue-blood in spirit , Virginia Woolf, who paid attention to female problems and thought about women's fates throughout her 59 years, posing many views which influenced the latter times significantly. Though some of them are immature from today's point of view, but these views point out the direction for posterity feminists especially in England and America.Woolf probed into series of problems in women's writing and lifes. She was sure of the existence of female's literature tradition. In order to prove her view, she made lots of work in evaluating female writers and their works in history. To most feminists in England and America, they inherited Woolf's thought, laying stress on setting up a tradition and standard. From this point of view, Woolf set a good example for posterity feminists. But as a white writer in middle class, Woolf just paid attention to somewhat famous white writers. Elaine Showalter put forward "Women's inferior culture" in order to deepen Woolf's theory.Woolf posed "killing the angel" in order to encourage women's own voice. Beauvoir thought that it is the unreasonable social structure and system that result in the appearance of angels. There are many new connotations about angel, but when you trace back to Woolf, you could find that she put forward this question as a woman who received very good education. In fact, education plays an inevitable role in developing women's independence. But it is regreted that Woolf didn't give the specific way of education. After all,the view of killing the angel in mentality is a constructive scheme for the afterworld.It's of great importance to build women's own language if women want to express themselves freely. It is the just thing that women lost. Woolf encouraged women to write. She thought writing is very necessary to build female discourse. But Woolf disagreed to express the mood of anger when women write. She thought that anger hampered women's activities. In fact, Woolf set up a good example in building female discourse.In《A room of one's own》,Woolf put forward an important thought "androgyny". She said that in the condition of "androgyny", writers could creat astonishing works. On the contrary, it is impossible for writers to write in his/her single gender. In order to overcome the partial sides of paternity and broaden the prospect of women, Woolf put forward androgyny and she offered a new train of thought.In the history of man, most excellent writers have an inclination of anti-war. As a sensitive writer, Woolf connected the war and violence with male chauvinism and she connected the feminism with peace. She thought that men launched wars "not in order to satisfy my natural instincts, but in order to attain profits which I haven't enjoyed and I could never enjoy." This idea is very enlightening for posterity. It can be said that Woolf is unique in the times of Victoria, she became a pioneer because of her own inspiring and rich theory.