It is plain that to Virginia Woolf it is the social situation of the female writer that, to some extent at least, determines the nature of the work produced, and here lies the crux of her argument. It is an argument which is built up through detailed comment and observation, and even in A Room of One's Own, where it is most explicitly and thoroughly argued, it takes the form of an allusive, semi-fictional form of writing. This should not lead us into denying its logic or coherence; in her work as a whole we find many of the major elements of a highly developed feminist critical theory. For not only does she consider the nature of women's own literary production, she also covers the complex questions of the critical reception of texts by women authors, when criticism was in the hands of men, and the image of women presented in the predominantly male literary tradition.

Virginia Woolf draws attention to the condescending attitude of male critics towards women writers, and the inevitable effect this had on their work. Of course many writers tried to escape this prejudice by using male pseudonyms, but nonetheless it could not be evaded. Its influence is discernible in the very texture of the writing, as she notes in A Room of One's Own:

'One has only to skim those old forgotten novels and listen to the tone in which they were written to divine that the writer was meeting criticism; she was saying this by way of aggression, or that by way of conciliation.'

Such bias, to Virginia Woolf an aesthetically undesirable element in a work of literature, was the inevitable consequence of the general climate of opinion with regard to women who challenged the narrow domestic lives prescribed for them. Another way in which this image of women was perpetuated, she argued, was in the representation of women in works by male writers. She makes the point that this representation traditionally took the form of a mirror-image of the position of women in real life. In discussing the conventional representation of women in literature, she comments

'Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.'

'Almost without exception,' she notes, women are 'shown in their relation to men.'

The force of Woolf's arguments is perhaps strongest when she considers the obstacles faced by women writers. These obstacles, she argues, are 'immensely powerful', yet 'difficult to define', and yet she precisely does try to define them in relation to her own writing in the essay 'Professions for Women'. Those same attitudes under which the great Victorian women novelists laboured have not evaporated, simply through formal changes in the possibilities open to women. In the present day, she asks rhetorically:

'Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books? Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man? Inwardly, I think, the case is very different; she still has many ghosts to fight, many prejudices to overcome.'

In this essay Virginia Woolf suggests that the two main obstacles are the 'Angel in the House' and the difficulty of 'telling the truth about my own experiences as a body'; effectively this means rejecting the ideal, pure image of woman, and frankly exploring sexuality and the unconscious. Under the image of the 'Angel in the House' she summons up the ideal, self-sacrificing woman who

'was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.'

In the earlier version of this essay (a draft of a speech given to a women's organization in 1931, and reprinted in The Pargiters, 1978) Virginia Woolf adds that this ideal of womanhood was accepted by both men and women

'for reasons I cannot now go into - they have to do with the British Empire, our colonies, Queen Victoria, Lord Tennyson, the growth of the middle class and so on'

and she adds that it was addressed in literature 'in a style which to me is really disgusting'.

In the essay Virginia Woolf finally slays the Angel by throwing her inkpot at her, only to encounter the second problem, that of sexuality. Again this is presented allusively, in the image of the writer in a state of trance:

'She was letting her imagination sweep unchecked round every rock and cranny of the world that lies submerged in the depths of our unconscious being. . . . And then there was a smash. There was an explosion. There was foam and confusion... she had thought of something, something about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say. Men, her reason told her, would be shocked. . . She could write no more.'

Virginia Woolf concludes that although men allow themselves great freedom in this respect, they condemn it in women; in her notes for the original speech she added that

'The future of fiction depends very much upon what extent men can be educated to stand free speech in women.'