Myths, Fiction, Feminism, Ideology

Simone de Beauvoir from The Second Sex introduces the female myths as they pertain to literature and ideology, and she introduces a very good question. “The myth of women plays a considerable part in literature, but what is its importance in daily life? To what extent does it affect the customs and conduct of individuals?”(p.282). She introduces a myth that women are a ‘division of humanity into two classes’, but in reality women are nothing more than human beings. This myth becomes clearer in the works of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. This work helps to entail, bridge the myths to reality. Ultimately, creating, what Annette Kolodny considers a ‘Feminist Ideology’.
In A Room of One’s Own the narrator embarks on a journey to define woman and fiction. In search for answer she discovers a myth, or minor point. Such that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved” (Woolf, 4). Woolf creates the dimensions of such a myth, similar to that of Beauvoir. Under the pretense of historical events that occur in the Oxbridge University, lack of resources for women is due to lack of women contributing any wealth to Universities for women. Then, she explains this myth in relation to reality; that women have no money, “because, in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them right to posses what money they earned…”(Woolf, 22).
Woolf’s search for the answer to why women in literature cannot create fiction due to money and a room of one own becomes, and helps to create social awareness. Something that Kolodny considers a very significant aspect of Feminist Ideology. In which she focuses on the notion of “[bridging] the gap between the world as we found it and the world as we wanted it to be” further on, focusing to bring ‘personal insecurity’ out to the public sector of the world. Ultimately, it is the significance of such myths that women play in literature, because myths arise and are created for the sole reason, so as to reflect the hardships of reality. Fiction and literature coincide with the very notion of myth, and is used as a vehicle to spread some sort of an Ideology so as to create a change in our everyday life.