Muted Women in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barre

Muted Women in Virginia Woolfs A Room of Ones Own and Elizabeth Barrett Brownings Aurora Leigh In the predominantly male worlds of Virginia Woolfs A Room of Ones Own and Elizabeth Barrett Brownings Aurora Leigh (Book I), the womens voices atomic number 18 muted. Female characters be hold in to the domestic spheres of their homes, and they are excluded from the elite literary world. They are expected to function as foils to the male figures in their lives. These women are trained to remain silent and passive not only by the males around them, but also by their parents, their relatives, and their peers. Willingly or grudgingly, the women in Woolf and Brownings works are regulated to the domestic circle, discouraged from the literary world, and are expected to act as foils to their male counterparts. Without the means of securing financial independence, women are confined to the world of domestic duties. In Woolfs A Room of Ones Own, Mary Setons homely mother is neither a businesswoman nor a magnate on the Stock Exchange. She cannot afford to provide formal education for her daughters or for herself. Without money, the women must toil day and night at home, with no m for learned conversations about archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography the subjects of the mens conversations (26). As Woolf notes, if Marys mother had gone into business, there would have been no Mary. Children are financial burdens and they make heavy demands on a mothers time. It is impossible that a mother could feed and play with their children while making money, because women are expected to raise large families they are the ones who carry o... ...n. And muted the women are, in A Room of Ones Own and Aurora Leigh. They cannot vocalize their opinions, wants, and necessarily when they are confined to their homes and discouraged from joining the predominantly male literary circl es. Moreover, females are expected to act as foils to the males so that the patriarchal societies may flourish. Coleridge in one case said that a great mind is androgynous (Woolf, 106). When the men and women can cooperate and unite their minds and bodies, Shakespeares gifted sister will be able to re-emerge, freeing the muted voices of these oppressed women.WORKS CITEDWoolf, Virginia. A Room of Ones Own. London Flamingo, 1994.Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. 1856. Correspondence Course Notes ENGL 205*S Selected Women Writers I, Spring-Summer 2003, pp. 26, 27. Kingston, ON queen mole rats University, 2003.