Virginia Woolf “A Room of One’s Own”

“A room of one’s own” is an extended essay where Virginia Woolf presents and discusses large questions related to women’s history. What the writer ponders is that “a woman must have money and a room of her own”. According to that, Virginia appeals both real (or room) and a metaphorical space. Nevertheless, what we call “metaphorical space” is the historical perspective she refers to and criticizes. In her essay, Virginia takes into consideration the historical perspective, reflecting that women have never been considered as important as men to write literature, and not only just fiction, poetry also. To Virginia the question is why there have been few high-quality woman writers. Her answer is because historically female gender has been discriminated by chauvinist society, limiting women’s lives in all senses. Indeed Woolf also addresses that one of the problem is education, because men were well educated and women were not, pointing out implicitly how inferior for that society women were in the XIX Century.


Concluding with my reflection, I can argue that when Virginia Woolf states “a woman should have money”, she is claiming that the process of writing involves on the one hand, most part of the day , and on the second hand, time to think to create literature but without interruptions. In fact, it is a way of living and if a woman works to have incomes, then, her art will be affected or interrupted. In other words, Virginia Woolf also infers the education of women needed more money.

















References:

http://www.enotes.com/room-ones

Oliver Twist A Film Directed by Roman Polanski

Oliver Twist is a film based on Charles Dickens’s story. It is the dramatic story of a poor and orphan English boy who by his conditions is sent to an educative institution. Unfortunately, the child, who is nine years olds, is not well treated there. Refusing to live under a place without love and care, he moves on to live on streets. The movie portrays the life of this little and unlike child who is confronted to live under the most miserable conditions that a human being can face. In fact, one of the main aspect of this film is how well depicts the reality that million children used to lead but in poor and insanity conditions in a society that promoted happiness and progress for everyone.

Moreover, two remarkable aspects of Roman Polanski film are how well harshness and isolation are illustrated. In that time, London city was crowed of people who were trying to look more opportunities to survive, but becoming many of them, including children, in objects to obtain money or others simply dying because of illness or starvation. To conclude, Oliver Twist is an excellent movie to appreciate the complexity and sad situations that modern time brought to humanity, but especially innocent people or victims such as Oliver Twist story.

The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens

The short story written by Charles Dickens is clearly an analogy of Modernity. To me, it is a demonstration of how the progress has become a significant part of men’s life, but making of him a piece of this industrialized and sadness world. What Dickens wanted to ilustrate us is the reality of those times in where he was living in. The main characters of the story illustrated the impact of living in a society who was loosing control because of the desire to be modern. In fact, I would say that they were just victims of this “modernity” or progress, which the only things it brought to men and women was disillusion , sadness, depression , darkness and hopeless to their lives.

On the other hand, in terms of education, this short story could be a really good tool to use it in the classroom. We can teach, show and demonstrate our students the real impact that progress has brought to our lives. Indeed, there are many elements which are still present and teachers can work on them allowing learners to think critically, making a good use of literature into our profession.

FRANKENSTEIN

After reading Frankenstein I could not stop thinking on my childhood. The image of “that monster” that I used to see in some movies comes to seem for me very different and not as terrible as I used to think.

While I was reading, I started to realize that Frankenstein was not so bad, even if he murdered Victor’s girlfriend. To be clearer, I would say this main character suffered a lot. In fact, he can be seen as the representation of manipulation and the desire of power from a human being, who was Victor in this case. Metaphorically speaking, Frankenstein is like the extension of his creator who wanted to create a being that could be able to do what he could not do, such as loving. From my point of view, Frankenstein was just a victim of the sense of greatness of man, suffering discrimination, unhappiness, loneliness, emptiness, rejection and hate by many members of society.

Concluding with my reflection, I would like to argue that we can use Frankenstein’s story to include it in education. As teachers, we can work with students analyzing elements such as discrimination and relate it with some specific situations that exist within the classroom. We can not forget that probably there are many Frankenstein “inside our own classroom” or which is more terrible and dangerous, some teachers can be “capable to create” little monsters. For this, literature is an important, useful and a really good tool to use it in the process of learning and teaching values!