To understand why option 2 (BCE) is the correct answer, we need to closely examine Virginia Woolf’s actual views and writings about women, especially as found in her seminal essay A Room of One's Own (1929). Let’s evaluate each of the five statements:
✅ B. “She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction.”
Correct – Woolf observes that in literature written by men, women often play grand or romanticized roles, dominating fiction as muses, lovers, or tragic heroines. This statement captures her argument that fictional women were powerful and central, while real women had little agency or visibility.
✅ C. “She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history.”
Correct – This is a near-direct quote from A Room of One's Own, where Woolf says:
“Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant.”
She emphasizes the paradox of women being idealized in poetry but ignored in history. This contrast was central to her feminist critique.
✅ E. “(I)n real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.”
Correct – This echoes Woolf’s point about the limited education and rights of real women in earlier centuries. She discusses how even brilliant hypothetical women like “Shakespeare’s sister” would have been denied opportunities and reduced to domestic roles.
❌ A. “She is born stupid and can do nothing but stupidity.”
Incorrect / Misattributed – Woolf did not say this. In fact, she challenged the stereotype that women were intellectually inferior. This quote misrepresents her stance. She often criticized such views held by men, not expressed them herself.
❌ D. She criticized Shakespeare for being harsh and rude to his female characters in his plays.
Incorrect – Woolf praised Shakespeare’s genius, especially his ability to create nuanced characters. She invented “Shakespeare’s sister”, a fictional character to argue that a woman of equal talent would never have been allowed to flourish. She did not criticize Shakespeare’s treatment of female characters but used his name to explore the systemic suppression of women’s voices.
✅ Therefore, the correct statements are:
B
C
E
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