Systems of Inequality for Females and Colonized Peopl in Virgina Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and Franz Ferdinand's "Wretched of the Earth"

Essay by moon_vixen33University, Bachelor'sA-, April 2006

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Europeans regarded the 20th century with a great deal of optimism, believing that they would continue to dominate the globe culturally, economically and technologically. However, any hope for peaceful political processes was soon dismissed, as the early decades of this new century became the bloodiest, riddled with wars and revolutions. As the oppressed white working classes of Europe rose up against their elite administrators, similarly many minority groups began to struggle for freedom. It was exactly the armed conflicts of the 20th century which contributed to several changes in European social structure, as new opportunities in the public sphere appeared for women during and after the world wars. In addition, these acts of aggression between European nations devastated the landscape and caused many fatalities, demonstrating, for the first time, a perceived weakness in the European armor to people of colonized countries. Worlds apart in terms of geography, nevertheless the treatment of colonized people and the women of Europe closely resembled one another thus far.

Both groups were viewed as inferior to European males and also treated as property. Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth exemplify the revolutionary changes in societal views during the 20th century, as both comment on the oppression of these minority groups, advocating for freedom by means of procuring an individual space or nation.

When one considers that Europeans viewed any native peoples as racially inferior, it seems inconceivable to believe that even the Aryan women of Europe were treated with similar domination. Both groups are viewed as property, merely existing to benefit and promote the status of European males. However, colonized people represent the extreme, as they are stripped of the human qualities in the eyes of Europeans: "At times this Manicheism goes to its...