Professions for Women
July Reading Group
Last month, we voted on a couple of essays for our classic feminist essay Reading Group, and Virginia Woolf’s 1931 “Professions for Women” was the runner-up, so we’ll be reading it for July. You can access the essay (originally a talk) here.
In this essay, Woolf outlines her concept of the “Angel in the House,” which has experienced a kind of revival in the age of tradwives, who are essentially embodying and performing this ideal. So it’s a great time for us to revisit these ideas about femininity, motherhood, and writing.
Here’s one passage from the essay, describing the Angel in the House, just to get us going:
I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it—in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.
Woolf also writes about how she encountered the Angel in the House when she wrote, in the form of her inner critic, and how she killed her:
And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: ‘My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.’
And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money—shall we say five hundred pounds a year?—so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her.
Share in the comments your own experiences with the Angel, whether in your everyday life or in your work. How are you seeing this idealized image of women persist in culture and politics today?
Our Reading Group discussion this month will be held on Monday July 28 at 12pm PT/ 3pm ET on Zoom. Link will go out before the event. See you there!
Reading Group threads and events are for paid subscribers. Upgrade now to join us, to connect with our angry and inspired community, and to get lots of other fun treats. Annual paid subscriptions are currently 20% off.