HW 22:Patriarchy is dead

In chapter two of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf believes that anyone who reads the paper would know that England was under the rule of patriarchy. Woolf believes that everyone would know this because it is evident in the paper that the males make up the headlines and write the papers. It is clear to understand that when it comes to what is important in the world, women are not; they are not talked about in the news and their writing does not go in the newspaper. When talking about the professor she states, “ he it is who will acquit or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything.” (Woolf, page 34). This topic plays an important role throughout the chapter; it is made clear that women are thought of as inferior to most men. Woolf provides a theory on why men feel the need to think of women as the inferior sex, she states, “the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of the feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power.”(Woolf, page 35). In today’s society in the United States it is well known that women are not the inferior race but rather equal to men. One of the prime examples while browsing through the newspaper is the headline, “Hilary leads in donor refunds”. Having a woman run for president shows how the roles that women once played have drastically changed, and it also shows that the United States is far from a patriarchy.