Passage One

1．Feminism in general has a long political history，developing as a substantial force，in America and Britain at least，throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries．Feminist criticism of the early period is more a reflex of“first-wave”preoccupations than a fully fledged theoretical discourse of its own．But two significant figures may be selected from among the many other feminists working and writing in this period:Virginia Woolf^[31]—in Mary Eagleton^[32]'s phrase，“the founding mother of the contemporary debate”—who“announces”many of the issues later feminist critics were to focus on and who herself becomes the terrain over which some debates have struggled;and Simone de Beauvoir^[33]，with whose The Second Sex(1949)，Maggie Humm^[34]suggests，the“first wave”may be said to end．

2．Virginia Woolf's fame conventionally rests on her own creative writing as a woman，and later feminist critics have analyzed her novels extensively from very different perspectives．But she also produced two key texts which are major contributions to feminist theory，A Room of One's Own(1929)and Three Guineas(1938)．Like other“first-wave”feminists，Woolf is principally concerned with women's material disadvantages compared to men．However，her general contribution to feminism is her recognition that gender identity is socially constructed and can be challenged and transformed，but apropos of feminist criticism she also continually examined the problems facing women writers．She believed that women had always faced social and economic obstacles to their literary ambitions，and was herself conscious of the restricted education she had received(she was taught no Greek，for example，unlike her brothers)．Rejecting a“feminist”consciousness，and wanting her femininity to be unconscious so that she might“escape from the confrontation with femaleness or maleness”，she appropriated^[35]the Bloomsbury^[36]sexual ethic of“androgyny”^[37]and hoped to achieve a balance between a“male”self-realization and“female”self-annihilation．

3．One of Woolf's most interesting essays about women writers is“Professions for Women”，in which she regards her own career as hindered in two ways．First，she was imprisoned and constrained by the dominant ideologies of womanhood．Second，the taboo about expressing female passion prevented her from“telling the truth about her own experiences as a body”．This denial of female sexuality was never consciously subverted in Woolf's own work or life，in that she thought women wrote differently not because they were different psychologically from men but because their social positioning was different．Her attempts to write about the experiences of women，therefore，were aimed at discovering linguistic ways of describing the confined life of women，and she believed that when women finally achieved social and economic equality with men，there would be nothing to prevent them from freely developing their artistic talents．

4．Simone de Beauvoir—French feminist，lifelong partner of Jean-Paul Sartre^[38]，pro-abortion and women's-rights activist—marks the moment when“first-wave”feminism begins to slip over into the“second wave”．While her hugely influential book The Second Sex is clearly preoccupied with the“materialism”of the first wave，it beckons to the second wave in its recognition of the vast difference between the interests of the two sexes and in its assault on men's biological and psychological，as well as economic，discrimination against women．The book established with great clarity the fundamental questions of modern feminism．When a woman tries to define herself，she starts by saying“I am a woman”:no man would do so．This fact reveals the basic asymmetry between the terms“masculine”and“feminine”:man defines the human，not woman，in an imbalance which goes back to the Old Testament．Being dispersed among men，women have no separate history，no natural solidarity;nor have they combined as other oppressed groups have．Woman is riveted into a lopsided relationship with man:he is the“One”，she the“Other”^[39]．Man's dominance has secured an ideological climate of compliance:“legislators，priests，philosophers，writers and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth”，and，à la Virginia Woolf，the assumption of women as“Other”is further internalized^[40]by women themselves．

5．De Beauvoir's work carefully distinguishes between sex and gender，and sees an interaction between social and natural functions:“One is not born，but rather becomes，a woman;．．．it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature．．．Only the intervention of someone else can establish an individual as an Other．”It is the systems of interpretation in relation to biology，psychology，reproduction，economics，etc．，which constitute the(male)presence of that(someone else)．Making the crucial distinction between“being female”and being constructed as“a woman”，de Beauvoir can posit the destruction of patriarchy if women will only break out of their objectification^[41]．In common with other“first-wave”feminists，she wants freedom from biological difference，and she shares with them a distrust of“femininity”—thus marking herself off from some contemporary feminists'celebration of the body and recognition of the importance of the unconscious．(Rewritten from Raman Seldon，Peter Widdowson，and Peter Brooker，A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory，pp．124-127)

Questions for Understanding

1．Why do you think Mary Eagleton describes Virginia Woolf as“the founding mother of the contemporary debate”?

2．What does the writer of the essay believe to be Virginia Woolf's general contribution to feminism?

3．Why does Virginia Woolf advocate“androgyny”?What does the term suggest?

4．In what ways does Virginia Woolf see her own professor as a woman writer be hindered?

5．In what sense does the writer of the essay say that Simone de Beauvoir's book“beckons to the second wave”?

6．What“basic asymmetry”between“masculine”and“feminine”does Simone de Beauvoir's book reveal?

7．What does Simone de Beauvoir's saying—“One is not born，but rather becomes，a woman”—imply?

8．How significant is the distinction between“being female”and being constructed as“a woman”?