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HERBERT MARDER (ESSAY DATE 1968)

SOURCE: Marder, Herbert. “Causes.” In Feminism & Art: A Study of Virginia Woolf, pp. 5-30. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

In the following essay, Marder discusses Woolf’s personal philosophy and ideas about women and feminism in rela-tion to developments in English social history and the beginnings of the feminist movement.

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In the years immediately preceding Virginia Woolf’s birth, the legal status of English women was essentially the same as it had been in the middle ages. Their rights as individuals were severely limited. Married women could not dispose of the money they earned, or enter into valid contracts. They could be deprived of a say in the upbringing of their children. In one celebrated case, a husband, upon being estranged from his wife, sent the children to live with his mistress and refused to permit the mother to see them. He...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Virginia Woolf (Review Date 25 January 1905)
   2. Virginia Woolf (Letter Date 16 October 1920)
4. General Commentary
   1. Herbert Marder (Essay Date 1968)
   2. Barbara Currier Bell And Carol Ohmann (Essay Date 1974)
   3. Toril Moi (Essay Date 1985)
   4. Harold Bloom (Essay Date Fall 1994)
5. Title Commentary
   1. A Room of One's Own
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Virginia Woolf
2. Feminism