Virginia Woolf - a modern lens view

If one reads Woolf today, she still has a punchy style but she doesn't appear to be at the leading edge of radicalism. She is a feminist, educated, opinionated but no more than any educated, young woman in 2012. What does this show? I think this shows us is that Woolf was seventy years ahead of her time. The fact that she had such advanced views in the 1910-1930 period is prescient and remarkable.

It is hard for us today to comprehend how radical she appeared to others in her own time.

Woolf the feminist radical

Another area of Woolf's radicalism is her proto-feminism. Her views were radical for the time and two of her pieces of writing in particular, A Room of Ones Own and Three Guineas were feminist in content and direction. Her thesis that women needed a room where they could think, read and write alone was considered to be disturbing for the status quo. Three Guineas which derides the then current practice of only educating sons was also challenging for the times. Woolf asks what would have happened if Shakespeare had had an equally talented sister and shows how society is squandering half of its intellectual capital. Read today these writings appear somewhat tame, but that is because feminism has driven our thought in the direction posited by Woolf.