Pinkie’s Realm

Something I’ve noticed throughout Virginia Woolf’s writing is that she tends to be very cynical and ironic, and uses very eloquent and elaborate figurative language as she writes. Finding specific examples of this irony, however, proved to be a bit more challenging than I previously thought. Though I picked up on the general feeling and mood of her writing, there were only a few instances in which I could demonstrate her usage of irony. On page 27, she is speaking of the books in the library that were about women, and how they were nearly all written by men (ironically). In chapter 2 she discuesses her experience there, and how she barely managed to contract any truth from these books at all. Here she sarcastically describes how long it will take her to write down real knownledge and truth within these books, when she says, “the aloe that flowers once in a hundred years would flower twice, before I could set pen to paper”. Clearly she’s being sarcastic, as no one will live for 200 years, she is merely making a point to show that she will never be able to write this truth down. And again, on page 29, she talks about important men and their opinions and writings about women. As she is doing so, she mentions Samuel Butler and inquries as to why he says ‘Wise men never say what they think of women’…and then she goes on to insist that, “Wise men never say anything else apparently.” I liked her attitude in this and thought it was funny. Woolf isn’t being serious when she says that wise men never say anything at all, she’s just saying that if wise men never say what they think of women, than absolutely none of the books on the Female (written by all men) were by wise men, in the least bit. Further on into the chapter she discusses mirrors and looking-glasses. She claims that mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action, in that men must always be right (superior to women) and that they must see themselves larger than the females.  She says that without mirrors, a “man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of cicaine” (page 36). Now she isn’t really trying to say that mirrors are realy essential to a man’s vitality, but once again she is making an example by being ironic. Overall, I think she is a bit harsh towards men. She rarely talks about males in her life, and how any of them have affected her on more of a personal level. I understand she lived in a time where women were treated differently, but I don’t think men need to be generalized in that time any more than all white people should be blamed for slavery during that era. It’s also amusing to me that Virginia Woolf says that in a hundred years, “Women will have ceased to be the protected sex”. She thinks we as women in this new day and age, because we have the same rights and jobs as men, will stop being the longer-living sex, and things will have evened out. I think this in itself is ironic, because little does she know women nowadays do have nearly all the rights and jobs of men, and yet we still live longer!