Clearing the Minefield:The Problem that Women Encountered

In this paper an attempt has been made to explore the literary 'minefield' which women have set out to clear. It is rough and strewn with boulders and rocks. Women face a number of problems as they move forward with their revolutionary motives. Women entering the field of literature incorporate the problem of the creation of the self which is intricately associated with the body and whose identity develops through the use of language. Another impediment that women writers face when they enter the literary field is their body. The female body which houses the self of the woman becomes a prison house for that woman. Our social norms are so deeply entrenched in the social structure that it has blighted the supposed liberal or radical act of describing the female body by the women writers. Virginia Woolf as a feminist has also faced the problem of entering into paradoxically impossible realms of the body, the self, life and literature. Woolf's treatment of women evinces her deeper knowledge about human being. More than that, her attempts at bringing a solution to women's problem allowed her to think differently from other feminists who think that women need to abandon male language.