(written for the course Modernism and Postmodernism Period by Wesleyan University)
Virginia Woolf and Judith Butler described in their works the vulnerability people suffer in the society they are inserted, although the writers are almost a century apart, they were accurate about the inability ‘different’ people have to withstand the effects of a hostile environment, usually a common morality of a certain community dictated by a dominant gender: the man.
Woolf used characters in her novels to expose the inconceivable ideas society used to reject, which always lead to a vulnerable personality. In To The Lighthouse, Lily Briscoe is the “feminist, unmarried and painter” woman, totally out of the common sense at that time. Not only Lily was obscured by her own confused thought, but we also have Mr. Tansley “whispering in her ear, ‘Women can’t paint, women can’t write’”, a character obliged to grow up by his own matters, working, studying, putting his efforts to gain wage, which also was a target for bullying because of his way of living. He was not from a ‘family breed’. Another situation we can encounter in her novel is about man having feelings which were considered exclusively feminine, as we read with Mr. Ramsay, who was the rational one, but it “was a disguise; it was the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who could not say”, the father of eight children. Women in the early 20th were supposed to get well married. Learn how to sew, read and play the piano for her husband and family, a common thought that Mrs. Ramsay used to think a lot “people must marry, people must have children”. Being vulnerable was not about being different, but about not being the same as everyone. For many times, Mrs. Ramsay imagined herself in a different position, “Wishing to dominate, wishing to interfere, making people do what she wished”, what she would instantly stop for considering it wrong. Wrong to think that way, wrong to wish something opposite to what she was raised to.
Another novel that vulnerability can be discussed is Mrs. Dalloway, when the character herself thinks that “every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself”, but the party was something expected a married woman from the high society to give, nothing different.
Seventy years later, Butler started advocating about gender problems in her essays, as she wrote in Undoing Gender, where she describes the issues some transsexual or transgender goes through “Certain humans are recognized as less than human, and that form of qualified recognition does not lead to a viable life. Certain humans are not recognized as human at all, and that leads to yet another order of unlivable life.”. In this part she exemplifies the harsh circumstances some homosexual have to live because their sexual orientation. Not only they are vulnerable as citizens but also as member of the family, being rejected, suffering physic and psychological abuses and in the worst scenario, killed by their own beloveds. With this projection of social prejudice, some questions arise “If I am a certain gender, will I still be regarded as part of the human? Will the “human” expand to include me in its reach? If I desire in certain ways, will I be able to live? Will there be a place for my life, and will it be recognizable to the others upon whom I depend for social existence?” The answer to all of them should be obvious and equal in any cultural aspect but unfortunately, they aren’t.
Being woman is already a circumstance of vulnerability, being of a different gender from the one she was born is even worse, as we read in Butler’s essay “Discrimination against women continues—especially poor women and women of color, if we consider the differential levels of poverty and literacy not only in the United States, but globally—so this dimension of gender discrimination remains crucial to acknowledge.”.
So we can conclude that reading Woolf or Butler’s work, vulnerability is a concept of the ignorance of human kind due to the aspects we are supposed to follow and sustain in accordance to what the dominant gender has determined to, no matter in which century or part of the world we are.
Bibliography
Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. 2004.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. 1925.
Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse. 1927.
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