When I began reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own my first impression was that it was going to be a piece largely devoted to injustices against women. The first chapter of the book certainly seems to be moving in this direction. The bit about the narrator not being allowed on the grass because she's a woman particularly struck a chord with me. This line definitely incited a bit of anger. My sense of social justice had been offended. The next chapter deals with this topic of social justice a little more thoroughly. In particular it deals with the concept of how society influences a both female and male roles. The the narrator explores why the author of a particular article, which focuses on the apparent mental and physical in inferiority of females, is so angry. The narrator's conclusion regarding this article is that the author felt that he needed to defend his position as a male superior. She postulates that the inferiority of females has not truly been as important as the superiority of males in reinforcing the current social situation. She also speculates that the reason for her clarity on the subject is that she exists somewhat outside of the normal social constructs because of the fact that she is allowed an allowance. This allows her to be somewhat independent.  The third chapter begins to deal with the fallacy of the traditional belief system that women are, in fact, inferior. The narrator puts forward the idea that despite the fact that females may have been as capable as males they had not previously been given the opportunity to demonstrate this capability. She uses a hypothetical example regarding Shakespeare's sister to illustrate this point. The author continues to argue the point that women had not been given ample opportunity to display their brilliance previously. Then she appears to turn her attention away from the past and begin to move towards the future. She calls attention that towards the works of some of the first female writers including Jane Austen, and comments on the way in which such women, who did not have any literary precedent, paved the way for those who are writing in the narrator'd present day.  In the conclusion of this book the narrator surmises that the ideal literary mind would be neither evidently male nor conspicuously female, but in fact would contain balanced forces of the two sexes. The narration of the writing transitions back to that of Virginia Woolf and she addresses counterarguments that may be made against this position and also reiterates the points that have been made previously.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this poem. I knew I would, having nothing but fond memories regarding The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock which I read years ago. However, one thing about Prufrock that was also true of this poem was that it was nearly incomprehensible to me upon first reading.

On the first readthrough of these first two sections of The Waste Land I just allowed myself to be immersed in the way the poem made me feel without worrying much about understanding what the purpose was. There's a special kind of feeling to this poem, I suppose it's a type of melancholy, that I really enjoying allowing myself to indulge in sometimes. I think this is the effect of the shifting perspective, the odd imagery (line 30, "I'll show you fear in a handful of dust), and the references to death or darkness without being overly macabre. I can't help but compare it to the melancholy tone of the romantics, but I feel like there wbias something a bit more poignant and human in that. This feels, to me, like I'm being taken by the hand by some benign ghostly thing and allowed to float through a series of images and situations. Though, this is my own personal experience and I am not sure whether this is a common sort of sensation or at all the intention of Elliot upon writing it. The title, The WasteLand, leads me to believe that I am not entirely off base.

When I went back and read these portions of the poem again, I was still a little murky on how to interpret them. However, I did notice a few things that interested me. Firstly, the poem includes a great number of biblical allusions. I don't actually remember discussing anything biblical when we studied Prufrock so it seems odd to me that they would be so prevalent here. Additionally, the clairvoyant in the first portion interests me greatly because she does not seem to fit with any other the other scenes within the poem and also because this inclusion of mysticism among so many biblical references is somewhat of a curiosity to me.