• Congratulations to the Class of 2024 on your results!
    Let us know how you went here
    Got a question about your uni preferences? Ask us here

a room of one's own/who's afraid of virginia woolf (1 Viewer)

ABC-123-CTJ-AE1

New Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2008
Messages
1
Gender
Male
HSC
2009
anyone else feel like telling Virginia Woolf to go cry me a fucking river?

I get what shes saying but could not give a shit

Essays only due 2moz no biggy (Y)
 

Susmaster

New Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2008
Messages
3
Location
Wollongong
Gender
Male
HSC
2009
is it too late to ask the board of studies to scrap these texts? It hurts...so much (assesment due tomorrow btw)
 

Penguins-quack

New Member
Joined
Nov 13, 2008
Messages
4
Location
Think Hell... only worse
Gender
Female
HSC
2009
I have a male teacher and were a mixed school. And he loves this book. I don’t mind A Room of Ones Own and really liked Who’s Afraid, but seriously?
Doesn’t anyone have some really good nerdy notes (sorry study notes) for this topic?
 

Nitronie

New Member
Joined
Aug 26, 2008
Messages
4
Gender
Female
HSC
2009
I'm doing these texts and having trouble as well, stupid all girls schools thinking we want to be feminists etc!!
anyways, only connection we have is in it's composition - both the characters in the play and Virginia Woolf dance around the truth to avoid confrontation... eg, VW will say a point you know that she means and then creates a conflicting viewpoint against it so that we are not sure what she believes, her use of exemple (fictional characters etc) are masking her belief... and we have to remember that throughtout the book she is writing from mary beeton(i think or seyton or whatever) and not her own perspective.
in WAoVW the characters assume childish roles and play with words and innuendo and seques etc to avoid the outright truth... Albee implies so much but we never really know what the truth is.

i dunno i think im gunna die with these texts!!

i don't particularily agree with what you're saying about Albee, he is not creating childish acts to avoid the truth, he is doing it as a commentary on society. He is an absurdist and this is apart of his principle to question/ bring to the audeinces attention the values which he believes are flawed. In abusrdism, langauge is considered to be flawed, therefore their childish acts represent these flaws, as language has no real meaning, the characters are able to communicate anyway they feel comfortable with
 

freegan_is_i

New Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2009
Messages
2
Gender
Female
HSC
2009
Edward Albee's play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, premiered in 1963 and was later adapted into a film version in 1966. The play/film utilizes Woolf's name as a musical punch-line for a joke that replaces "the big bad wolf" in the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" with "Virginia Woolf". The play and film have nothing to do with the author or her life.

Dam you wikipedia
i was going to say something smart here...but forgot.....
um-
i think who's afraid of virgina woolf and a room of one's own have many interelated or corresponding theme- e.g. truth and illusion
martha: truth and illusion george you don't know the difference
and in a room of one's own, virginia (through mary beton/seton) tries to sort out truth and illusion between the genders- as albees play also does this- this is a pretty strong link.
also existentialism- the (religious-kinda) movement exploring the sense of self is a strong theme throughout both albees absurdist drama and woolfs extended essay.....
strong personal and social contexts are chared by both authors.
both authors wrote their respective works post-world war in an economic boom time.
both authors were trying to shatter the current social/culture 'illusions' of the time-
albee shattering the 'american dream' and woolf shattering the apparent gender dysphoria of the time- the year woolfs work was written and published was the year all women in britain got the vote....

um- there are other things of course...
 

freegan_is_i

New Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2009
Messages
2
Gender
Female
HSC
2009
I'm doing these texts and having trouble as well, stupid all girls schools thinking we want to be feminists etc!!
anyways, only connection we have is in it's composition - both the characters in the play and Virginia Woolf dance around the truth to avoid confrontation... eg, VW will say a point you know that she means and then creates a conflicting viewpoint against it so that we are not sure what she believes, her use of exemple (fictional characters etc) are masking her belief... and we have to remember that throughtout the book she is writing from mary beeton(i think or seyton or whatever) and not her own perspective.
in WAoVW the characters assume childish roles and play with words and innuendo and seques etc to avoid the outright truth... Albee implies so much but we never really know what the truth is.

i dunno i think im gunna die with these texts!!
feminist- someone part of the movement promoting EQUALITY between the sexes- whats this crap about girls schools encouraging you to be feminists???you don't beleive there should be equality between the sexes?? i can tell you right now- the moment you start your career or a job- you'll be wanting to be paid for the same work as the man in the cubicle next to you who has bad body hygiene and and likes to mutter sexually explicit obscenities under his breath as you walk past- look up the definition of feminism girl- feminism doesn't mean your a bra-burning hippie (although the media would like you to beleive that!) it means you want equality between the sexes- as females are the ones experiencing massive discrimination and inequality (yes even today- average australian income for the same job female to male ratio is 75-100) women in australia are getting paid (one average only 75% of their male counterparts wages...). australia being one of the better countries interms of gender inequality.....

wait until you get into the real world- and have a job- then you'll be a feminist.
 

melissa_mac

New Member
Joined
Aug 11, 2009
Messages
9
Gender
Female
HSC
2009
i thoroughly agree with freegan_is_i
it is important to be taught and exposed to feminism, just because we may one day take pregnancy leave does not mean it should be harder for us to be hired and succeed. I have watched my mother go through the worst of sexual inequality at her work, when she was young (engineering was not the female job of choice) she suffered and worked hard at securing equality so that hopefully us (her daughters) would not have to go through what she went through. That is the point of feminist literature - they attempt to teach us the importance of equality so we don't make the same mistakes

anyway...
we are a co-ed school and mine is the only class doing these texts.

many of the boys enjoyed the texts. Not as much Woolf, but it was intellectually stimulating - like nothing we've been taught before, and we had drama students in our class act out Albee's play which made it very funny.

Although both have a distinct feminist melody, we found the contrast and connection to be gender roles and relationships. Evolving over time, women's liberation has expanded women's roles and possibilities however it is the fear, anger and frustrations between genders that has remained static.

i can give text related examples if anyone wants to hear i just cbf right now.
 

Eibbor

New Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2009
Messages
3
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
Do any of you guys who finished this off last year have any notes/essays/resources I would be able to look at? These texts are ridiculous and even more difficult to analyse when you are a guy... stupid feminists...
 

Trans4M

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2009
Messages
1,225
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
Uni Grad
2016
i think virginia woolf is pretty clever and influential. I kinda like her text but it is so confusing. I literally read it over once and didnt understand what was going on. So now I am doing a second or third time chapter by chapter and writing down what happens as I read. Then i will ask my teacher to clarify things.

I find Albee's play pretty hilarious. It is more straight forward than Woolf's text but i agree it is hard to analyse both of them together for comparison.

So any notes from past hsc students will be highly appreciated
 

NewiJapper

Active Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2009
Messages
1,010
Location
Newcastle
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
We are doing this in our english class and this week we looked at all the possible links with reference to the last HSC question and there is actually a lot of material in both the books to be linked with aswell as their contexts alone. I'm not trying to boast or anythibn but there is a lot of stuff to talk about with both of the novels.

I'd rather be doing this than Bladenstein.
 

Trans4M

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2009
Messages
1,225
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
Uni Grad
2016
We are doing this in our english class and this week we looked at all the possible links with reference to the last HSC question and there is actually a lot of material in both the books to be linked with aswell as their contexts alone. I'm not trying to boast or anythibn but there is a lot of stuff to talk about with both of the novels.

I'd rather be doing this than Bladenstein.
i agree there are several links but i would actually rather do bladenstein as it is less complex. AROOO and WAOVW are quite complex texts in my opinion and they are not that interesting...
 

nevery

Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
125
Location
Sydney
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
We're doing these two texts in comparative study at the moment. I reckon A Room of One's Own is pretty tough-going, and apparantly according to our teacher us doing not-so-common texts can be good for us. But the flip side is that there's not as much material out there for us. I just finished searching on the resources section of this site for notes/essays and I found 1 document on a chapter 4 summary of A Room Of One's Own. So when I'm finished I'm doing the right thing and putting my notes up there.

The key link in both of these texts is how people (in this case most notably Judith Shakespeare / other women and George) are limited in their creativity poetntial by the values that society holds in their context.

Comparative study is not always about drawing similarities, but also differences and how these texts draw on the same ideas differently. For example, in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? we see some reversal of gender roles in Martha and George, and we see that juxtaposed in Nick and Honey, and in lots of the text of A Room of One's Own.

Just my two cents.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top