From the female writer in A Room of One’s Own to the female reader in The Reader: feminist voices

Abstract

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is the pioneers of the very first movement of feminism. Her work A Room of One's Own (1929) shows gender discrimination with discourse of feminism and of literary creativeness, and also thoughts for fighting for gender equality. For Woolf, a liberal writer is the one who has his/her own room to work and is adequately educated. Despite of the wide gap of generation, the novel The Reader (1995) by Bernhard Schlink (1944-) continued with feminism from the view of female readers. It also shows his view point of a liberal reader who has the right to participate in literary reception. As a continuation of Woolf, Schlink argues that the very basic step to all to become a free reader is to educate, to eliminate illiteracy and to foster cultural and social knowledge. It can be seen that the feminist voices in these two works have much in common, creating a deep feminist dialogue. We believe that link between them as well as between the works and the readers can evoke further feminist voices and discourses, contributing to the development of this approach.