Joshua Wu
Equal in the Twentieth Century
The late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century became the rising point of equality and social reform and protest. After many Nationalist movements of reform and revolts, this resulted in several unified countries. It then led to the next big social issue, equality. The female equality movement, especially the suffrage movement, gained traction throughout the world gaining massive support from many. Many female activists and authors were very vocal about the injustice they faced and how the societies they lived in needed to change. Some of these activists/authors were: Virginia Woolf, Alexandra Kollontai, Constance Markievicz, and Sylvia Pankhurst. Though in different forms and different pursuits these four authors pursued the same ultimate goal, equality.
Virginia Woolf was an author during the turn of the century and in her piece, “A Room of One’s Own” she draws meaning from the injustice between the sexes in the time and in the industry of literature and art. In her piece, after referring to Shakespeare, she says, “A highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people…No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish…for chastity may be a fetish invented…” (298). Prior to this quote Woolf spoke about the history of Shakespeare and how he had forced himself to be recognized by actor-managers and ventured on his own. Woolf shows the difference between the treatment of two individuals with equal talent, but of one being male and the other female. The male being easily able to trek out on his own, live life as an actor, even meeting the queen and eventually becoming the most well-known playwright in history, Shakespeare. The