Virginia Woolf College Meals 
Hadassah Lai
Halle Van de Hey
AP English
Fifth Period
Chapman
January 14, 2015
Virginia Woolf The roles of men and women have long been different. Women have always been struggling to make themselves known, while men easily gained respect and superiority over women. In Virginia Woolf’s two passages, Woolf makes a profound distinction between the male and female schools in which she partook meals from. Including details that describe the luxury of the male school and the relative poverty of the female school, Woolf uses varied sentence structure, imagery, sensory words, and diction to describe her attitude towards the inferiority of women. In the first passage, Woolf makes it evident that a very sophisticated and poised manner was served with the succulent dinner she received at the men’s college. Woolf uses sensory words and descriptive imagery to showcase the impressive and delicious meal that was served. Woolf uses great detail to describe the meal being presented such as “to call it pudding and so related to rice and tapioca would be an insult”. It would seem that throughout the passage, the author chose to describe only certain details to describe the images she wants portrayed. In stark contrast to the second passage, the first passage was written to show the superiority of men and the comfort and luxury of their lives. Woolf’s harsh description and cold tone regarding the women’s college in the second passage depicts her attitude towards women’s roles in society. She uses short and curt sentences with blunt and repetitive bursts. IN contrast to the phrase “a confection which rose all sugar from the waves” in the first paragraph, Woolf uses phrases such as “rumps of cattle in a muddy market” and “mitigated by custard” in the second passage to create a stark contrast. This creates a sense of inferiority and bluntness towards a women’s place. She seems to suggest that the meal at the women’s college could not have possibly been better than the one at the
Halle Van de Hey
AP English
Fifth Period
Chapman
January 14, 2015
Virginia Woolf The roles of men and women have long been different. Women have always been struggling to make themselves known, while men easily gained respect and superiority over women. In Virginia Woolf’s two passages, Woolf makes a profound distinction between the male and female schools in which she partook meals from. Including details that describe the luxury of the male school and the relative poverty of the female school, Woolf uses varied sentence structure, imagery, sensory words, and diction to describe her attitude towards the inferiority of women. In the first passage, Woolf makes it evident that a very sophisticated and poised manner was served with the succulent dinner she received at the men’s college. Woolf uses sensory words and descriptive imagery to showcase the impressive and delicious meal that was served. Woolf uses great detail to describe the meal being presented such as “to call it pudding and so related to rice and tapioca would be an insult”. It would seem that throughout the passage, the author chose to describe only certain details to describe the images she wants portrayed. In stark contrast to the second passage, the first passage was written to show the superiority of men and the comfort and luxury of their lives. Woolf’s harsh description and cold tone regarding the women’s college in the second passage depicts her attitude towards women’s roles in society. She uses short and curt sentences with blunt and repetitive bursts. IN contrast to the phrase “a confection which rose all sugar from the waves” in the first paragraph, Woolf uses phrases such as “rumps of cattle in a muddy market” and “mitigated by custard” in the second passage to create a stark contrast. This creates a sense of inferiority and bluntness towards a women’s place. She seems to suggest that the meal at the women’s college could not have possibly been better than the one at the