Virginia Woolf Oppositions

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Virginia Woolf is able to complicate and, to an extent, contradict, the many oppositions that she includes in her work. One opposition that plays a large role throughout her work involves the relationship between the intelliegence of men and women during the period. Woolf cites the imaginary book “The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex” to represent the common view of the time that men are simply more intelligent than women. Although she makes this opinion the common opinion of the intelligence of men and women drastically opposing each other, she complicates the issue by giving the imaginary tale to Shakespeare’s sister. In this example, Woolf tells the tale of a history in which “Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith” and continues to tell that she could have been great had she had access to the same “chance of learning grammar and logic” and was able to be educated, she could have lived up to the image of her brother (1986). This complicated the issue of women’s intelligence when compared to men in that it was access to education, not intelligence, that led to one’s ability to be great. With this opinion added to argument of women’s and men’s intelligence being opposite, the issue was instantly complicated.
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