Virginia Woolf e le altre/i by Stefania Lazzari

A Room of One's Own Eleonora

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:06:30 UTC

"A Room of One's Own" is an essay written by Virginia Woolf, first published on 24th October 1929.
The essay was based on two conferences she delivered at Newnham and Girton colleges, two women's colleges in Cambridge in 1928.
In this essay Virginia reflects on the literary problems and on the female condition.
Virginia Woolf underlines passages of exclusion of women in history, she herself was a victim of this exclusion, in fact she didn't attend University because instruction was forbidden for women at the times.
The title refers to the impossibility of women to have a lounge where they can enjoy their privacy and get tranquility to devote to writing.

●All I could do was to offer you an opinion upan one minor point - a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.●

The Madwoman in the Attic (Michele)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:06:56 UTC

It is an essay written in 1979 by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar which analyzed female characters in 19th century English literature.
From the book it emerges that , due to machismo in literature, female characters are always stereotyped in two ways:
1) Angelic and pure women;
2) Rebels and mad mothers.
The two authors examined the works of English writers (Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Bronte) that in their opinion vented in their works on the difficulties and the frustrations to enter literature male chauvinist world by making their female characters mad and rebels like "Jane Eyre", the main character of Charlotte Bronte' s homonym novel.
.The book's main theme reflects on famous Virginia Woolf's quotation that says:<>.

Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre ( Lisa)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:07:20 UTC

Charlotte Brontë was an English 19th century writer whose novel "Jane Eyre" is considered a classic of western literature.

PLOT:It tells about the life of this girl, Jane Eyre, and all the sufferings that she has suffered from her infancy.

Jane’s parents died when she was still a baby so she lived with her aunt but soon she was sent to a poor school. In this school many girls died for the poor conditions they lived in.

When Jane was eighteen, she became a teacher for a rich family. However in that house lots of strange facts happened. Then Mr Rochester, her student’s father, asked her to marry him. The night before the wedding, Jane discovered that Mr Rochester was already married with Bertha Mason. He didn’t say anything because she was mad, she has been living in his attic the entire time.

So Jane went far from that house and she arrived in a little place with a few houses. She started a new life with other people; in fact she started to work and she had new friends but she never forgot her beloved Mr Rochester. One day Jane received a letter from her uncle, who had died, and she discovered that she had become a very rich woman because he had died leaving her all his money.

So she decided to return to Mr Rochester. When she arrived to the house she saw that all had been burnt by the fire.Bertha, before committing suicide, had burnt the house. Mr Rochester had become blind and he had lost one hand. Jane told him her love and they decided to marry. They were very happy because they had also two children.

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (Sara R)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:09:22 UTC

It's a 1966 postcolonial novel written by the British author Jean Rhys and it is the prequel of the famous "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte with which there's a deep connection.
The main themes are: race ( Antoinette's family had been slave owners) and colonialism (in the novel there's no omission of the british colonialist history).
It's also considered a feminist work because it deals with the unequal power between men and women, especially in marriage.PLOT

It starts after the slavery abolition act of 1833 with the protagonist Antoniette and it is divided into three parts:
1st part) Antoniette tells the story as a child and starts when her family became very poor, after the abolition of slavery. So, in order to solve the economic situation, her mother (Annette) needs to remarry.
But the freed slaves become angry towards her family, and they burndown Annette's house and kill Antoniette's younger brother.
Then Annette is being sent to live with a couple, due to her struggle with her mental health, which tormented her until death.
2nd part) In this part there's an interchange between Antoinette's point of view and her husband's.
Here we have Daniel, who claims to be Antoinette's illegitimate brother and demands hush money. Then her husband starts to be unfaithful and emotionally abuses Antoinette by calling her Bertha and causing her pain with his affairs; her mental and emotional state gets worse.
She tries to get her husband's love back again by giving him a love potion but she doesn't get the results she wanted; he then decides to take her back to England.
3rd part) this part is narrated from Antoinette's point of view. Her husband abandons her in the attic of the "Great House" promising to visit her but he won't; in the meanwhile he's seeing other women, like the young governess Jane Eyre. Antoinette asks for help to escape to her stepbrother, but he refuses to interfere with her husband.
At last she dreams about escaping her life by setting the house on fire and taking her own life, and that's what she does .

The End

Jeffrey Eugenides (Daniele)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:20:26 UTC

Middlesex
The novel starts in Butinio ,a small Greek village in Turkey , where Eutherios , also known as "Lefty" and Desdemona Stephanidis (brother and sister) fall in love. Because of the war between Greek and Turkish, they emigrate in the Usa. They have a son, Milton, who will marry Sourmelina andJ immy's daughter , Tessie and from this marriage Calliope will be born. Calliope, Callie, is a pseudohermaphrodite, but no one will find that out for long time.
She falls in love with her best friend and after an accident she is driven to hospital , where Dr. Luce finds out her condition , that is a lack of 5a -reduttasi, an enzyme that converts testosterone in its active form, DHT. After this exam , Dr. Luce recommends to her parents a reassigment of sex. But Callie decides to accept her male nature, runs away from home and becomes an attraction performing as an hermaphrodite. In the meanwhile Milton is receiving continuous calls from a man who claims to know where Callie is. Milton wants to know if this man says the truth , so he asks him where Kelly's grandparents comes from. The man answers correctly . He finds out that the mysterious man is Father Mike, who takes him to Canada borders where Milton will die after an automotive pursuit. After this accident , the police will take Milton's body back . In the meanwhile Callie's workplace is searched by the police , while she is taken undercustody by Chapter Eleven .
In the end Desdemona reveals to her that she and "Lefty" are siblings. Callie will ends up living his life as a man , finally finding his place in the world.
It was a pleasure to read this novel , because the main character accepts his new life , without regretting her past one.

Pier Paolo Mandetta (Francesco)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:21:07 UTC

Dillo tu a mammà
Pier Paolo Mandetta is a blogger and a writer. He wrote: "Vagamente suscettibile", "Cuore satellite" and "Dillo tu a mammà". "Dillo tu a mammà" is the story of a guy called Samuele Cocco who, after longtime, returns home to the south, because he lives in Milan with his boyfriend, Gilberto. Because of Gilberto he returns home, accompanied by his friend Claudia, for telling his parents he is going to marry him, but he knows that his parents will not accept that. But things do not go as he wants, still he wants to declare to his parents without compromise. This book also broadly tells the story of Pierpaolo's life. In an interview he said:<<“Dillo tu a mammà” è per tutte quelle persone che prendono decisioni in base ai propri desideri, non conformi alle regole sociali.>> in English:<<"Tell yourself to Mum" is for all those people who make decisions based on their wishes, not in accordance with social rules>>

sources: http://www.silenziostoleggendo.com

Mary Wollestonecraft (Noemi) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:21:42 UTC

Mary Wollestonecraft was born in 1759 and was one of the first people to support the importance of recognizing more women’s rights.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is the most important work of Wollstonecraft and one of the first writings of feminist philosophy.

Wollstonecraft writes that women must receive appropriate education as they are essential to the nation in which they live as they educate their children. Instead of considering women as a sort of ornament of society and a market object on the occasion of marriage, they are, as human beings, holders of the same fundamental rights recognized to men. In this regard, Wollstonecraft disputes brightly with many male writers who deny this; Rousseau, for example, argued that women should be educated in order to please men. Wollstonecraft recognizes the existence, in her days, of many stupid and superficial women, but not because of their deficiency, but because of a lack of education.

While making repeated references to gender equality, Wollstonecraft, does not claim that there is equal equality. She insists, in fact, on the equality in the eyes of God. All this is in contrast with her statements about the superiority of masculine force: this is why she was criticized of being incoherent

Tiziana Ferrario (Danilo)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-03-10 18:22:23 UTC

Orgoglio e Pregiudizi

Tiziana Ferrario, journalist, reporter, Rai TV presenter, in recent years has lived as a correspondent in New York following the passage from the Obama presidency to Trump's one. Recounting the growing tensions and divisions in the country, she was struck by the wave of pride that emerged among American women who raised their heads asking for equality and defense of their rights, considered at risk. She wanted to describe this ferment in the hope of launching a debate in Italy on how women, victims of murder, discrimination, stereotypes and prejudices, could count more if they were aware of the subordinate role they are often forced to play. The journalist tries to get to the bottom of these issues, setting gender equality as an objective, defining this the unfinished challenge of this century. The meaning of the cover is very interesting: we can admire the statue of a girl in front of that of a bull. On March 7, on the occasion of the Women's Day a statue appeared, depicting a little girl with her fists on her hips as a sign of challenge. The statue is titled "Fearless Girl" and it was created by the artist Kristen Visbal. The Fearless Girl faces the statue of the famous Wall Street bull, the Charging Bull, illegally installed in 1989, in front of New York Exchange Stock, by the artist Arturo Di Modica as a symbol of American strength after 1987 stock market crisis. The statue immediately became an appropriate symbol of female fortitude and strength.
In April 2018 the statue of the Fearless Girl has been moved to a new location

Virginia Woolf's Life (Sara F.)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-04-07 13:11:41 UTC

Virginia Woolf has been one of the most important and innovative figures of the English literature of the twentieth century. She was a writer and an essayist and she was also very active in the fight for the rights of the women.

Andeline Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, she grew in a literary environment. At that time women didn't have access to public education, that's why Virginia got, with her sister, education by her mother and she had free access to father's library. Thus began her passion for writing.
When Virginia was young she had been victim in two serious episodes that stroke her all her life long: when Her mother died and when her brother raped her.
She began suffering from neurosis that with the time worsened and she tried to commit suicide at the age of 22 jumping from balcony.
Virgina was married with Leonard Woolf but it is known that she was bisexual and that she had a relationship with Vita Sackville-West to whom she dedicated the novel called "Orlando".
She confessed her homosexuality with the novel " Mrs Dalloway".
Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941 because her disease had worsen. She put some rocks in her pocket and drowned herself in the river Ouse.
Before her death she left a note to her husband:

« Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. »

After her death Virginia's body was cremated and her ashes was buried with the husband's ashes in the garden of Monk's House.

Pseudohermaphroditism (Yuri)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-04-07 13:14:14 UTC

Pseudhermaphrotides are people with body not coherent with their gonads. It can be opposed to the term "true" hermaphroditism, which describes a condition where testicular and ovarian tissue are present in the same individual. Pseudohermaphroditism was tolerated in ancient times. In ancient Greece and in ancient Rome, intersex people (as pseudhermaphrotides and hermaphrotides) were considered as a prodigy. Only afterwards pseudohermaphrotides were discriminated for their "strangeness and little manhood". In many countries the sex of pseudohermaphrodite children was chosen by their parents. Now pseudohermaphrodite people mostly choose themselves their sex.

LGBT movement🏳️‍🌈(Diego)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-04-07 13:15:59 UTC

We are ghetto Stonewall girls,
We wear our hair in curls,_nh
We wear no underwear,
We show our pubic hair,
We wear our dungarees,
Above our nelly knees!

LGBT movement is the common name for groups, organizations and associations with a program of changing social, cultural, human, political and juridical conditions of homosexual, bisexual and transexual people.

The homosexual movement was born in the 1960s of the XX century in the USA.

Before talking about the homosexual liberation movement and about its development, we need to define two movements that, growing, have given origin to the lgbt movement: the homophylic movement and the homosexual movement.

The homophylic movement states the period of homosexual liberation movement since World War II to the revolts of Stonewall in the USA and to the birth of the gay movement in 1969.

Homophyls wanted to promote sexual liberation, hiding their most important element, the sexuality. The essential difference between homophylic and homosexual movement was: the first one wanted the homophylic integration in the society as it was, while gay movement wanted the change of society to integrate even all the people that were judged marginals ( Italy, between catholic moralism and fascist, and then communist moralism, didn't allow the birth of an homophylic movement).

Nowaday LGBT movement is in continuous evolution.

In 1969, with the revolts of Stonewall, the homosexual movement was born.

The revolts of Stonewall were a consequence of extreme collisions between homosexual groups and New York police.

During that period, police used all the reasons that could be thought of to validate a detention with charges of indecency such as: kissing, holding one's hand, wearing dresses of opposite sex, or even just finding at the time of a raid.

A bar could lose its license only if it offered voluntarily drink to groups of 3 or more homosexuals.

After Stonewall, the story of LGBT movement changed deeply.

It began a militant period with the birth of many associations. Symbol of this new phase of the movement was the Gay Pride Parade that began to take place in many US cities.

The revolts of San Francisco, that began at the beginning of 1970s, were dispersed like wildfire all over The Usa and on a big part of Europe.

The Lesbian movement, through a series of political agreements, and in a sense even economical, was united to the group of homosexual movement.

The new-born lesbian movement was always alienated from the homosexual group, because it rooted in femminism. In that time, lesbian women had to face up two battles: equal rights by the man and equal rights because lesbians. And the homosexuals have always helped them.

Obtained those few rights ( like the abolition of Proposition 6) thanks to the revolts of St. Francisco, homosexuals had to deal with another big problem that directly hit them, the AIDS.

AIDS represents the terminal clinical status of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); it is a sexually transmitted disease and it can also be transmitted by contact with infected blood.

The sexual intercourse more at risk is the homosexual one ( anal intercourse). The Usa began the research of a cure only in 1981, when a woman took the HIV. As a matter of the fact before this event, the disease was called "gay cancer" or " gay disease". 342 thousand homosexuals quietly died in the inadequacy of American presidence.

Very important in the prevention of this disease was the action of a new-born homosexual association: ARCIGAY, .

From these events, the homosexual liberation group has done nothing but expand and evolve, obtaining many rights, such as civil unions (Sweden 1994, UK 2005, Germany 2001, Greece 2015 and at last Italy 2016). There are many associations born in defence of gay rights such as the AGEDO ( association of parents of homosexuals), the MIT ( Transexual Identity Movement), the club MARIO MIELI, and "IL TRIANGOLO DEL SILENZIO" ( Association of deaf homosexuals).

The aspects of the LGBT movement, dear readers, are full of mistery and shrewdnessThink about the LBGT flag..

Diego De Nardo_{attivista della causa.}

Orlando ( Veronica)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-04-16 09:34:48 UTC

♤Date of composition:
Orlando is a novel published in 1928. It has been defined a biography dedicated to Vita Sackville, the author's lover.
It covers many topics:
• the theme of the double
• male standards
• social rules
• the relationship of women with writing
• the theme of time and travel
• the crushed identity for the writers in 1900

♡Plot of the book
Orlando was a young English nobleman, when he met Queen Elisabeth I and she chose to bring him to court.
During the Big Cold Orlando fell in love with Sasha, the Russian ambassador's daughter, but she abandoned him. Gone back to his native home, Orlando fell in a long sleep, when he woke up he decided to leave for Eastl Asia as ambassador. Here, after many year mission , Orlando would sleep again for seven days, but this time he woke up as a woman. In this new female identity, she spent a period with gypsies, appreciating their female condition, that she found more free than in England.
The protagonist then went back to London driven from the love for Poetry. From this point her life was divided between the native home, where she could compose verses, and London where she met the noble society and prostitutes.
Orlando would finally find a love in the adventurer Lord Bonthrop Shelmerdine. The novel ends in 1928 where Orlando is a writer thanks to the poem "the Oak".

Virginia Woolf's Works (Marco)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-04-16 09:41:26 UTC

Virginia Woolf started writing in1905 for the Times magazine. In her early works , Virginia used a traditional novel technique, for example in "Night and day" (1920) but, after, she experienced the stream of consciousness in "Jacob’s room"(1922). Her first novel was "The voyage out" (1915) published by the publishing company founded by Gerald Duckworth. Her most known works are the novels "Mrs Dalloway" (1925), "To the Lighthouse" (1927), "Orlando" (1928) "The waves" (1931) and "Between the Acts" (1941).

Khaled Hosseini -The Kite runner (Loris)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-04-17 09:32:50 UTC

It is the first novel by the American writer of Afghan origin
PLOT:

It is a novel that tells the story of two boys, Amir e Hassan. Amir, Afghan, lived in Kabul with his father Baba, receiving continuous visits by Rahim Khan, his father 's best friend who has now become one of the family. Ali, who lived in the nearby shed, was the Hazara servant who had a son named Hassan with whom Amir had grown up to be friends and ignoring as much as possible the fact that one was master and the other servant. Hassan, however, still had a servile attitude towards Amir, who was still his master but also his best friend. Everything changed when Amir and Hassan took part in the annual kite race. Amir participated above all to make Baba proud of him   and he succeeded by winning. So Hassan, the kite-hunter, went in search of the last kite that had crashed to take it to his friend as a trophy.

He found himself in a blind alley surrounded by boys and Assef their leader who hated him because he was a Hazara and Amir because he was his friend. Assef raped Hassan while Amir watched the scene from a distance without having the courage to intervene and defend his friend who had noticed his presence. Since then things were no longer the same and when Ali discovered what had happened, he left Hassan without explaining why to Baba or others. As time went by, the situation in Afghanistan got worse so Amir and Baba went to America. Here Amir graduated, enrolled at university and got married. Soon Baba died leaving a great emptiness in Amir's life, almost completely filled by his wife. One day Amir received a phone call, it was Rahim Khan who was dying and asked him to visit him.

When Amir went to the now-old Rahim Khan, he told him he had seen Hassan again,he told him that he had married and had a baby, Sohrab. One day, however, the Taliban had killed Hassan and his wife and the child had been taken to an orphanage. Rahim Khan's last wish was for the child to be brought to safety and finally to have a happy life.
In addition he told Amir that many years before, Baba had laid Ali's wife pregnant and Hassan was born, who was therefore his illegitimate half-brother. Sohrab was Amir's nephew who learned this news to find him. When he arrived at the orphanage, he was told by the director that in exchange for money used to feed the children he let a man take one of them each month and that time it was left to Sohrab. Amir organized a meeting to talk to the man who had Sohrab with him, and when he saw him he recognized him, it was Assef, the same one who had raped Hassan many years before.

andreea_dinu47 — 2018-04-17 09:46:15 UTC

Ghada Abdel Aal - Iwant to get married! (Andreea)

Ghada Abdel AAL is a single thirty-year-old Egyptian pharmacist who writes a blog where she deals with the condition of women in Egyptian modern society in an ironic and no-malice way. The book has a readable vocabulary with a comic verve, but in spite of this the book tells us the unfortunate meetings with aspiring husbands in the living room of the house of the author. Because in Egypt marrying is a family affair. The parents of both parties are hunting for the best prey for their children.

And Bride, who is the main character of the story, tells us how is seen the arrival of more freedom in contrast to what happened before (husband chosen by parents of course)

stefania_lazzari66 — 2018-05-12 16:02:54 UTC