An Interpretation Of Marxist Feminism In Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is a world-renowned feminist pioneer.In her masterpiece To the Lighthouse,Woolf vividly depicted the differences and opposition between the two sexes,the miserable life of women in patriarchal society and her “androgyny” thought.Marxist feminism is a feminist theory developed in the second Western feminist movement.It critically inherits and develops Marxist view of women,and improves Marxist view of women from the perspective of gender,and it has many similarities with Woolf’s feminist thought.First of all,the thesis briefly expounds the main contents of Marxist feminism and Woolf’s vision on Marxist feminism;secondly,from the perspective of Marxist feminism,the thesis analyzes the main characters in To the Lighthouse,especially the two female characters,Mrs.Ramsay—the representative of the oppressed women and Lily—the “new women” of Marxism;finally,we analyze the most concerned issues of Marxist feminism—the causes and solutions of women’s oppression.The roots of women’s oppression are the exploitation of women by capitalist economic system and the oppression of women by patriarchal social ideology,and the economic factor is the key;the ways to realize women’s liberation that Marxist feminism puts forward are to overthrow private ownership economic system and the patriarchal world outlook,encourage women to return to the public work,and enable women to gain economic independence and so on.Only by liberating women can Marxist feminism be fully embodied.