China and the West

Ma, Rui. Cong Wu'erfu dao xi su de nü xing zhu yi pi ping [ID D31610].
Ma argues that Woolf's A room of one's own is recognized as a classic for feminist criticism not simply because of the major thinking Woolf produces, but because of the emphatic breakthrough she makes with patriarchal theoretical discourses. It is reflected in her innovative choice of a narrator with an ambigious identity, her use of metaphor, symbolism, and fictionalization. Ma also argues that Woolf's narrative form demonstrages her continuing protest against patriarchal discursive models. Woolf's description of the narrator's pondering the question of women and fiction on the banks of a river is not only a reflection of 'my thinking process' but also 'a demonstration of the power of thinking'. Ma sees Woolf's essay itself as a metaphorical network, in which various metaphors such as the title, the setting Oxbridge, and so on are not only anchored in their specific significance respectivels, but also associated with one another. Together, they greatly helped to convey Woolf's feminist ideas about women and writing and 'created a different rhetorical discursive model', rather than merely serve as a rhetorical technique. Woolf also introduces fictionalization into literary criticism.