PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN

Virginia Woolf was a critique and novelist. This essay ‘Professions for Women’ is plea for intellectual freedom and artistic integrity. Woolf’s profession was literature. Many women writers came before her. They made the path smooth and regulated the steps. So that was not much difficulty in writing. Writing was a reputable and harmless occupation. The family peace was not broken by it. Much money was also not needed.

Woolf explained how she became a journalist. She wrote review and sent them. It was rewarded. She got one pound ten shillings and six pence. She bought a Persian cat with that money.

Woolf narrated her experiences as a novelist. A novelist must be as unconscious as possible. Woolf wanted to review a novel by a famous man. For that she had to fight with the phantom. The phantom was a woman. She was called as the Angel in the house (the heroine of the poem written by Coventry Patmore) She was symbol of domestic dependence and domestic drudgery. 

The phantom disturbed her mind. Woolf killed that phantom. Killing the Angel in the house was part of the occupation of a women writer.

Women writers were impeded by the conventionalities of the other sex. The obstacles against women were very powerful. Women had to overcome many problems.

Killing the Angel in the house and telling the truth about her own experience were two important adventures of Woolf's professional life.

Woolf concluded the essay by saying that no profession was without obstacles. She called woman to break the idol of womanly profession to challenge the world.