Substantive Equality for Deliberative Democracy in Woolfs a Room of Ones Own - Essay Example

13 May Substantive Equality for Deliberative Democracy in Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” Women need more than the internalconfines of their mind to participate in public life, as they fundamentally require their own physical “room.” Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” (“A Room”) is an extended essay with six chapters. In Chapter Three, Woolf narrates the life of William Shakespeare’s sister, Judith, who does not have the same access to social, political, economic, and academic opportunities as William. As a result, she does not become a successful playwright like her brother, even when she has the same passion and imagination for writing (Woolf 3). Woolf uses this story, among others, to describe why women must have their private space to develop their identities. This space, nevertheless, is not only physical because it is also psychological, political, and economic. Deliberative democracy puts deliberation at the center of democratic processes and outcomes. Citizens must have the freedom to participate in discussions that affect their lives. Political equality is based on equal participation in these deliberations, wherein James Fishkin contends that political equality means “the institutionalization of a system which grants equal consideration to everyone’s preferences and which grants everyone appropriately equal opportunities to formulate preferences on the issues under consideration” (qtd. in Stein 321-322). Each individual has the right to express his/her own ideas and opinions. Robert E. Stein asserts, furthermore, that substantive equality is needed for deliberative democracy to happen. He defines substantive equality: “Substantive equality arguments claim that along with important procedural safeguards, minimum levels of social and economic equality are also necessary to ensure equality of participation” (322). Some people cannot participate in political discussions, if they must work every day to survive. Others cannot participate because society views them as inferior sources of information and knowledge. Deliberation cannot occur without attaining some level of substantive equality that enables all individuals to participate in it. Substantive equality is concerned of fair distribution of resources too. Unless people get fair wages or fair views as human beings, they cannot partake in public discussions (Stein 322). Society, through its web of different sectors and groups, must facilitate substantive equality. Substantive equality provides the necessary foundation of genuine deliberative democracy. Substantive equality has different arguments that must be explored further because they enlighten readers of underlying differences and similarities in the conceptualization and practice of the former. The first approach underlines equal access to resources. Proponents of equal access stress that “the existing distribution of power and resources does not shape their chances to contribute to deliberation, nor does that distribution play an authoritative role in their deliberation” (Stein 322). People must have minimal access to power and resources to meaningfully contribute to democratic deliberative processes. The second approach highlights capabilities. Even if fair access to resources exists, the absence of capabilities to participate in deliberation renders the former useless (Stein 322). Capabilities supporters assert that the quality of deliberation comes from sufficient deliberation capabilities. Another perspective of substantive equality pertains to reciprocity. Reciprocity does not give up equal access to resources. Gutmann and Thompson assert that reciprocity “holds that citizens owe one another justifications for the mutually binding laws and public policies they collectively enact” (qtd. in Stein 322). Stein remarks that reciprocity adds a layer of moral perspective to democracy, where substantive equality is right because it respects human dignity (322). People must mutually respect each other’s right to deliberation, and this includes agreeing to disagree, as they acknowledge their differences. Another perspective on substantive democracy includes emotions in public discourse. Stein argues that substantive democracy focuses too much on rationality, which undercuts the role of passions in pluralistic substantive equality. He states: “Only by acknowledging and exploring those emotional components of rational deliberation, though, can we develop conditions that will allow for effective and democratic deliberation” (Stein 323). He stresses that fears and passions are real aspects of people’s frameworks, so they must be as equally valued as reasonable expressions. This paper believes that all these aspects are important in defining and explaining substantive equality. Capabilities, access to resources, emotions, and rationality altogether provide a more comprehensive understanding of substantive equality. This paper goes back to analyzing Woolf’s “A Room,” beginning with her main argument and claims. Woolf argues that women need a room of their own to achieve their potential and master their identities. The room, however, is not only a physical room, but the achievement of economic and political equality. Julie Robin Solomon provides a postmodernist analysis, where she argues that “A Room” represents the two realities of “capitalist patriarchy” (332). The realities are that the room is a “private property” and a “proper position” in social hierarchy (Solomon 332). Private property is essential because it includes having enough money to attain power in society. Woolf understands the injustice of a system that serves to reinforce the inferiority of women’s social status: “I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not” (6). She calls women to understand that despite the limitations of society and culture, they must use the same system to liberate themselves. In other words, through their proper position, they can and must access wealth because it provides them the power needed to have a room of their own in its physical sense. Money is not something to be shunned, but exploited like men have done and continue to do at present. Woolf says: “If only Mrs. Seton…and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money…we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions” (1). Money is essential to have the means, capabilities, and peace of mind for a private room. Solomon shows that women need capital to access their private space, while their private space can enhance their wealth too (334). Thus, Woolf shows that there is a dialectical relationship between economic and political empowerment. Aside from describing the relationship among wealth, political power, and intellectual privacy, Woolf promotes libertarian views in addressing gender equality. She diverges from other feminist writers who want to change the entire socio-economic system. She wants them to work in the system, where women must not be passive writers, for instance, but aggressively enter the masculine marketplace and negotiate terms like men do (Solomon 334). The presence of reality can and must be leveraged to serve women’s needs. Solomon illustrates Woolf’s views as “aggressive, but not radical” (334) because Woolf is a realist. As a realist, Woolf knows that if women want tangible outcomes for their feminist movement, they must use the same system that seeks to displace them. She presents an objective view of gender revolution that does not transform the society instantly through outright gender war, but through incremental socio-economic and political changes. The keys to deliberative democracy for women do not aim to dismantle the economic and political structures of society. They promote using these structures for women’s gain this time and not their perpetual loss. Woolf, however, differentiates working within the system and losing one’s cherished principles for gender equality. In Chapter One, she meets a Beadle who is shocked that she walks on the turf. She regains the path, but she stresses in Chapter Four: “I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” Women must not let go of their inviolable rights to democratic processes that will help them fight for greater equality in the long run. Woolf demonstrates that women can use the system to advance gender equality, but their principles must be constantly hinged on their principles of human dignity and freedom. After this analysis of Woolf’s arguments and claims, this paper proceeds to the opposing claims for women’s private physical space. One line of analysis states the modernist libertarian view that women need a symbolic physical space to achieve substantive justice for their gender because it completes their private space. Wendy Gan argues that physical solitude is critical to privacy. She says: “There needs to be physical solitude to make privacy complete” (Gan 68). She acknowledges the significance of the physical space to women’s inner development. Chantal Cornut-Gentille D'arcy explores the application of Woolf’s “room” to Cultural Studies in Spanish universities. She asserts that the Spanish university does not provide a room for Cultural Studies to grow and develop. The room symbolizes the political space and political maneuvering required in attaining gender equality, in accordance to Woolf’s libertarian views of social justice for women. Kathleen Wall goes as far as saying that the form of Woolf’s essay promotes contradictions. She argues that “the primary purpose of Woolf's doubly framed, fictionalized essay is to effect a balanced, unresolved dialogue between the contradictions inherent in her text and her task” through presenting both “material” and “aesthetic arguments” (191). The contradictions are between the political nature of struggling for a room and the impersonal and indifferent stance of art (Wall 191). Despite these contradictions, they are paradoxically independent and interdependent (Wall 191). Wall finds this strategy effective because “[i]t allows her to make use of…her anger while questioning the effect of anger…on the aesthetic object. It allows her to pursue truth while affirming its problematic status” (191). The modernist stance is self-reflective and yet it does not necessarily call for widespread radical social changes. It recognizes plurality of frameworks as legitimate sources of learning. For Wall, Woolf notes “that the problem is not simply that she cannot deliver the truth, but that the nature of truth itself is problematic, and calls for a different set of strategies” (192). They are not interested in closed, single-framework answers, but in the deliberation of diverse ways that truth can be attained for social justice. The inwardness analysis of the room provides a strong psychological aspect of libertarian substantive justice. On the contrary, another line of analysis argues that women cannot own their room’s physical space because it is infused with masculine objectivity that must be deconstructed first to fully allow women’s development. Gan is concerned of the framework which defines these rooms that women can access. She emphasizes: “While a study offered respite from the demands of female other-centeredness, it was also an exclusionary and isolated space, deeply entrenched in masculine domestic power” (68). Women cannot easily have their own space because patriarchal beliefs and conditions curtail their access to it, and if they do have access, masculine norms control it. Space should not be seen as empty, but full of power relationships and related struggles. Michel Foucault argues that space is not a vacuum and value neutral because it contains the means of power, including “disciplinary force and surveillance” (qtd. in Gan 69). Rulers use domestic space to control and oppress women and other minority groups through social and cultural norms, practices, and institutions. Instead of a modernist stance, these scholars propose a postmodernist approach of recognizing binaries and dismantling them. Stein explores the role of Professor X in “A Room” as the protector of the status quo. He uses the social identity theory which believes people formulate categories wherein their reference group is assessed as superior to others (Stein 326). The system justification theory expands social identity, wherein Jost et al. contend “that there is a general (but not insurmountable) system justification motive to defend and justify the status quo and to bolster the legitimacy of the existing social order” (qtd. in Stein 326). Woolf uses rational deliberation that undercuts masculine rational deliberation by using logic and evidence to disprove the superiority of the male gender. Deconstructing the masculine space challenges and breaks it down, and it is a critical process to owning a room for women. Indeed, this paper affirms that women need physical space, which includes psychological, political, and economic empowerment, to ensure their privacy, but it must deconstruct masculine values and limitations that define and control that space, in order to truly access a private space. Women have to be realistic because male writers, for instance, did not write without their political and economic comforts, and women deserve access to and capabilities of using the same freedoms. Private space is insignificant without physical space, where physical space is a symbol for access to and attainment of political and economic opportunities and freedoms. Woolf, after exploring the historical role of women in fiction, provides a scathing remark on the limitations of privacy. She says: “Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant” (Woolf 3). In her imagination, her being and works have value, but outside it, they are meaningless, unless they have a private space of their own. With this private space that stands for political and economic power, women can become who they want to be without social and financial restrictions. Judith, as Woolf shows, will have an equal chance of becoming as famous as her brother. Instead of living in a society where “[a]nonymity runs in [women’s] blood” (Woolf 3), she can build her identity the way she sees it fit. Access to education and other resources is essential to women. Woolf stresses the value of money in women’s empowerment: “If only [women] before [Mrs. Seton] had learnt the great art of making money…we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions” (1). With enough money, they can finish education and have a dependable income. They will be released from the shackles of marriage due to poverty and family pressure. They can discuss and pursue politics, anthropology, and economics, or any other field, wherever their strengths and interests lie. Women’s empowerment is their ultimate room, that place where they can exercise their minds and express their ideas without feeling being inferior. Access to education is not enough because women must actually have capabilities and freedom needed to use it for their benefit. Woolf uses contradictions to emphasize the difference between access and capabilities to use of this access. She provides the example of access to education: “Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband” (Woolf 3). Women might be celebrated in their minds, and even in fiction, though not history. The implication is that their privacy is not enough to empower them to maximize education; they must also hone their capabilities to serve their purposes. Aside from abilities, women must have the authority to use their talents too. History is filled with gender prejudice against women. Woolf says: “The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw, Write? What’s the good of your writing?” (3). As long as society sees women as inferior to men, their products and efforts will be inferior too. Freedoms and capabilities are essential to substantive equality. Women can only ensure that they have a private space after deconstructing the male spaces, which have eliminated and devalued their existence and contributions. History is a good place to start this deconstruction. Woolf criticizes the absence of women’s lives in history books: “…it often seems a little queer as it is, unreal, lop-sided” (3). In every war and human milestone in different fields and other public endeavors, women are missing. Their absence is unrealistic because by their mere presence in these historical moments, they have contributed something, but none of these are included, not even as “anecdotes,” as Woolf notes (3). Literature is the next field of study, as Woolf explores the absence of Elizabethan women writers. She narrates a gentleman, who might be a bishop, who once wrote this, which she paraphrased: “Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare” (3). The verbal irony is that the bishop believes that cats have soul of some sort, and yet they cannot go to heaven. The implication is that if women have minds and basic literacy skills, they can also write plays at the level of Shakespeare. Women must realize the power relations of existing system, and the binaries that define it, so that they can question and change it. Nevertheless, instead of radical social transformation, this paper understands Woolf’s proposal of libertarian changes. The system can be effectively used to work for women empowerment. Woolf says: “If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind” (3). The language and system of men can be deconstructed to empower women. They can be used as means of attaining substantive equality, which will then pave for deliberative democracy. The economic system, despite its masculine values and interests, is critical to deliberative justice. Stein argues that “Woolf wants a space not only economically secure but also outside the mainstream political economic system, for great wealth” is needed for a strong physical body and strong mind (331). Women must earn their living, but they should not sacrifice their long-term ideals. Incrementally, they can change underlying beliefs and practices that introduce and reinforce prejudice and discrimination against women. Woolf’s room has multiple meanings and implications. Physical solitude completes privacy, according to Gan. D’arcy argues for the importance of physical and mental privacy for women in higher education institutions, while Wall asserts that frame narratives promote plurality in gender discourse. Solomon explains that “A Room” goes beyond the physical space, because it powerfully demands political and economic freedoms too, whereas Stein emphasizes the importance of psychological autonomy to substantive equality. Altogether, these sources can be synthesized as a struggle for gender empowerment. The total outcome is liberal ideas on gender and the feasible acquisition of a room within the patriarchal system, a system which will later on be transformed through increasing the effects of women’s rooms on diverse avenues of public life. From individual rooms, there will be community rooms, and soon, a universal room where men and women are fully equal in access to resources, interactions, and social perceptions of their worth and capabilities. Works Cited D'arcy, Chantal Cornut-Gentille. “A Room of One's Own” Cultural Studies 23.5 (2009): 855-872. Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Web. 9 May 2013. Gan, Wendy. “Solitude and Community: Virginia Woolf, Spatial Privacy and A Room of One's Own.” Literature & History 18.1 (2009). 68-80. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 May 2013. Solomon, Julie Robin. “Staking Ground: The Politics of Space in Virginia Woolf's ‘A Room of One's Own’ and ‘Three Guineas.’” Women's Studies 16.3/4 (1989): 331-347. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 9 May 2013. Stein, Robert E. “Fear's Anger: Virginia Woolf's Psychology and Deliberative Democracy.” New Political Science 31.3 (2009): 319-335. Political Science Complete. Web. 9 May 2013 Wall, Kathleen. “Frame Narratives and Unresolved Contradictions in Virginia Woolf's ‘A Room of One's Own’.” Journal of Narrative Theory 29.2 (1999): 184-207. Project Muse. Web. 9 May 2013. Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” 1929. Web. 9 May 2013. Read More