Thursday, May 25, 2006

Testando título

It happened during a lecture. It was today. Better. It was tonight. Passeio pelos bosques "Virginianos". A lecture on Virginia Woolf's "A Room of one's own". It amazed me. I came to point out that, when it comes to literary matters a woman, in order to be productive, or successful, must be replaced by another woman whose voice is to be silenced once she's the one performing the so called "female duties" in the space of the family in the absence of the mother who's busy doing her writing. Differently from european aristocratic families from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which counted on an impressive number of household servants (men and women), the modern middle class housewife who turns to be a writer, or a professor, or a teacher must rely on somebody else who will clean, cook, wash, go shopping, do the laundry, iron, babysit, an so on. This person is usually another woman. A woman who will perform these physical works as her female employer will do her intellectual work. As I see it, it builds a vicious circle. The emancipation of one can only exists upon the imprisonment of the other. This female worker will have no voice, nor time, nor any of the conditions which would set the environment for reflective, intellectual, or literary production. When she gets home, after work, completely exhausted, she will start it all over again, since she's supposed to provide her own family the same services. Then, at bedtime, she will be nothing less than dead tired. This is not all, yet. Her scarce income is the one that supports the family. Again, no time, no disposition, no energy left, no means, no money, not a chance. And here I will paraphase Woolf, as this woman, she will not have "a room of one's own". At this point of my explanation, the two professors giving the lecture rose their voices in protest. "My housekeeper has a better life", "I wish I could only work the hours she does", "My cousin has a male housekeeper", and other likely statements. They took offense. By now, you may be asking yourself what could possibly have amazed me. I will tell you. They're both women. And both Feminist! than I in order to keep the house running of all sorts who performed all the domestic specially in our culture