Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Doris Lessing
| Defying Female Stereotypes |
| Raised in a Victorian family | |
| One of the foremost Modernist novelists | |
| Concerned with the damaging legacy of the nineteenth-century domestic ideal for women | |
| “Professions for Women” | ||
| Killing the “Angel in the House,” pp. 2215-2216 | ||
| “The Legacy” | ||
| Angela’s diary—woman’s true identity repressed by the “Angel in the House” domestic role, p. 2226 | ||
| Born in British colony in New Zealand | |
| Rebelled against provincial middle-class lifestyle | |
| Master of short story form | |
| Presented sex, pregnancy, and social divisions with candor | |
| Depicted young women on brink of adulthood constrained by narrow social conventions | ||
| “The Garden Party” | ||
| Laura’s hat—stereotypical “decorative” role forced on middle-class women, pp. 2429-2430, 2433 | ||
| Raised in British colony of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) by rigidly authoritarian parents | |
| Wrote about racial tensions in southern Africa and women’s search for independence | |
| Focuses on people’s inability to resist the cultural and social currents of their time | ||
| “To Room Nineteen” | ||
| Susan’s “intelligent marriage”—even intelligent, enlightened women can still be hampered by the domestic stereotype, pp. 2542-2544 | ||
| The river—emotional release and freedom, p. 2546 | ||
| The room—independent identity, p. 2558 | ||