For Next Thursday: Short Paper #1

Note: Don't forget to read Ch.4 from Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" for Tuesday.  This assignment runs in tandem with that reading.  

SHORT PAPER #1: Writing Like a ‘Woman’

In Virginia Woolf’s famous work, A Room of One’s Own (1929), she marvels at Austen’s ability to write books despite the incredible societal bias against women authors.  She goes on to claim that,

Only Austen did it and Emily Bronte.  It is another feather, perhaps the finest, in their caps.  They wrote as women write, not as men write.  Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of that eternal pedagogue—write this, think that.  They alone were deaf to that persistent voice, now grumbling, now patronizing, now domineering, now grieved, now shocked…that voice which cannot let women alone” (Ch. 4, 74-75). 

Looking at the three early works of Austen (“Love and Friendship,” “Lesley Castle,” and “Catherine”) find examples that show Austen writing “as women write, not as men write.”  What does it mean to write “like a woman” at this time?  It is the literal style of her writing?  Subject matter?  Characters?  Narration?  Genre?  Consider how Woolf discusses this throughout Chapter 4, and use specific examples (i.e. quotes) from the stories to illustrate this quality.  What made Austen a woman writer rather than, as Woolf claims, just another woman trying to write like a man?  What “voice” was Austen ignoring in these works, and what might it have wanted her to say?  (You might assume that her brother Henry was a representative of this voice, in this excerpt I gave you in class).

REQUIREMENTS

• At least 2-3 pages double spaced
• Quote passages from at least 2 of the stories; be sure they’re significant and explain how you read and understand them
• Due IN-CLASS on Thursday, September 13^th: we will discuss your papers as a class to see the different ideas and views they inspired

Good luck!  Remember, this is just a short “getting our feet wet” paper, so don’t stress out about it.  That said, the ideas in this paper will spill over into other assignments and possibly, your final Critical paper.