Topic > The question of gender roles in the works of Ts Eliot and Virginia Woolf

A general and underlying disgust for the opposite sex is one of the feelings shared by the writers Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot. Although the two authors have similar perspectives on the two genders, both regarding males as the inferior sex, the means by which Woolf and Eliot reach this conclusion are quite different. Likewise, the emotions that arise from their beliefs are quite different. Writing in the aftermath of the First World War, both authors have strong emotions about the society that emerged from the rubble. Woolf, in "A Room of One's Own," takes on an air of defiance toward the social implication that men are superior to women, and concludes by working her way through a jumble of thoughts: that men are afflicted by a of inferiority that can only be nurtured by women, and that it is society that perpetuates these circumstances. Eliot, on the other hand, believes that women are superior because they hold power over men; men need women, no matter how disgusted they are by the female gender, because of the innate need to procreate and because society dictates that men must have a partner. These ideas are represented in Eliot's poems "The "Wasteland" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Become original essayThe two authors see men in an almost identical way: they see the male as inferior, bordering on pitiful. This is exemplified by the way the men in their works interact with women who claim that men only insist on the inferiority of women. women can feel superior. He uses Napoleon and Mussolini as prime examples, saying that if "[women] were not inferior, they would stop expanding" (36) going as far as to say that without women acting as a glass-like aspect, men would die , "like the addict deprived of his cocaine" (36) Woolf believes that women were, "until Jane Austen's time... seen only in relation to the opposite sex" (82). Austen, most of the writers were men and they viewed women only in relation to men and not as individuals. Eliot perceives the way men treat women slightly differently, but to the same pathetic ends. The first-person narrator is the prime example of how men feel about women: Eliot seems to hate women because of the power they have over men, and hate men because of the power women have over them. . Alfred Prufrock,” the speaker suffers from an acute fear of failure in love, and is afraid to even begin a conversation with a woman, lest she reply, “That's not what I meant at all; " (6.97). The speaker, having managed to overcome mundane social circumstances such as tea, idle chatter, and reading novels, wonders whether it is worth trying to appear worldly. He is disgusted by the fact that he is attracted to women and resents being tied to a heterosexual bond that displeases him so much. He reveals his disgust for women when he talks about their arms: "arms bandaged and white and bare / (But in the lamplight dejected with brown hair). clear!)" (5.63). Both Woolf and Eliot argue that men are inferior to women, although it seems that general opinion at the time disagreed. When these authors examine the way women treat men men, their opinions become dissimilar. Woolf sees women as equal, if not superior to men, while Eliot believes that, although they are placed on an untouchable pedestal, they are mean and ignorant sterility..