There is much discussion in feminist circles about the "best" way to liberate women through writing. Some argue that a writer should, in an effort to regain her stolen identity, attack her oppressive influences and embrace her femininity, simultaneously fostering dimorphic literary, linguistic, and social arenas. Others argue that the feminization of writing pigeons women into an artistic slave morality, a mentality that expends creative energy on battle and not production, and inefficiently overturns stereotypes and foments positive social change; rather, one should lose gender self-consciousness and write androgynously. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Hélène Cixous and Virginia Woolf, in "The Laughter of the Medusa" and "A Room of One's Own" respectively, embody these opposing ideologies, highlighting different historical sources for the literary persecution of women, theorizing divergent plans for the advancement of women and stylistically reflecting their ideas. Ultimately, the main difference lies in the time frame of each philosophy and the belief in how much influence writing has in “empowering,” to borrow a current feminist buzzword. For Cixous, female writing goes hand in hand with women's liberation: «Writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursor movement of a transformation of social structures and cultural" (311). . Woolf, however, sees women's writing as emblematic of and dependent on the advancement of women in general; only with "a room of her own and five hundred pounds a year," through widespread social change, his imaginary Mary Carmichael "will be a poet" (94). One of Cixous's main intentions is "to destroy, to destroy" (309). ). This destruction of injustice colors his entire perspective; much of his essay is dedicated to reaction, to the overthrow of the tyranny of men. Men's writing, she argues, "is a place where the repression of women has been perpetuated, again and again, more or less consciously, and … has grossly exaggerated all signs of sexual opposition" (311). Cixous compares women's self-image to that of disenfranchised blacks: "They can be taught that their territory is black: because you are Africa, you are black. Your continent is dark. The darkness it is dangerous… And so we have internalized this horror of darkness” (310). Through these cultural judgments, men "have made women an anti-narcissism!... They have constructed the infamous logic of anti-love" (310). She links this antilove most strongly with self-loathing of the body: “We have been distanced from our bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to target them with that stupid sexual modesty” (315). “Shamefully” has two meanings here; men have been morally shamed in the lessons they have passed down, and women now bear that shame: “It censors the body and censors at the same time breath and speech” (312). This embarrassment of the self destroyed women's will to speak, to act, to identify themselves: "I wished that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire, so that other women, other unrecognized sovereigns, would exclaim: I too am overflowing; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard of -of songs" (309). Cixous continues this passage with more images of repressed eroticism and creativity: "Many times I too have feltso full of bright torrents that I could have burst... And I also said nothing, I showed; don't open your mouth...I was ashamed, I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear" (309). The verb "swallow", a passive act of submission with sexual overtones, embodies the difficult situation of mental submission of Although Woolf acknowledges this historical slavery, she ties it less to an abysmal self-image and shame and more to a socioeconomic servitude that shackled women to the domestic sphere and prevented them from writing focused on self-sufficiency achieved through money: “I pondered why Mrs. Seton had no money to leave us; and what effect poverty has on daily life." mind; and what effect wealth has on the mind" (24). Money, for Woolf, is one of the main givers of freedom, and this freedom translates into a sense of superiority or, in the case of poverty, inferiority: "Life... requires self-confidence... And how can we generate this imponderable quality... by thinking that other people are inferior to ourselves by feeling that we have an innate superiority - it may be wealth, or rank... - over other people" (34-5). ). Woolf links this game of superiority/inferiority to the relationship between men and women: "Women have served throughout these centuries as mirrors possessing the magical and delightful power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size... Here why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically on the inferiority of women, because if they were not inferior, they would cease to expand" (35-6). Since women have traditionally been oppressed to serve the needs of men, it follows that a man's triumphs should parallel a woman's failures. Woolf illustrates this with a concentrated look at the imaginary life of William Shakespeare's sister. Judith, as Woolf calls her, is immediately presented as an appendage of the house, while her brother is given free rein: "That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London... He soon found work in the theatre, became an actor in succeeded and lived at the center of the universe... Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, we suppose, remained at home... she was not sent to school... before she was a teenager, she must have been engaged to the son of a neighboring seamstress of wool" (47). William's "center of the universe" is a depressing contrast to Judith's wool sewing husband. Woolf's martyr flees to London, where she is greeted with more misogyny, this time of a more personal nature: "No woman, [the stage manager] said, could be an actress... She could receive no training in her trade ". " (48). Judith ultimately commits suicide in the face of these adversities. Her story is a parable of the intense social and economic struggle that every creatively oriented woman faces, but Woolf identifies another reason for the women's silence. women: the lack of economic and social freedom anchored in the lack of personal freedom, of privacy. "If a woman wrote," writes Woolf, "she would have to write in the common living room. And, as Miss Nightengale complained so vehemently, "women never have half an hour... to call their own" - she was always interrupted... Jane Austen wrote thus at the end of her days. ?...She was careful that her occupation was not suspected"" (67). This connection to the family room not only diminished the amount of work produced by women, but also ensured that the variety would never rival that of men's literature: "If Tolstoy had lived... in isolation... he could hardly have , I thought, to write War and Peace” (71).and peace is considered one of the world's greatest novels because "it is male values ​​that prevail... This is an important book, the critic presumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room" (73-4). Thus, according to Woolf, it was the triumvirate of economic, social and domestic slavery that had inhibited creative women in the past. Like Cixous, Woolf argues that men have affixed an "inferior" label to women that has silenced them; unlike her counterpart, Woolf does not focus on the nuances of this inferiority complex, namely the theft of the body from the female identity. Her historical study is more akin to Betty Friedan's “The Feminine Mystique,” ​​which explores the “nameless problem” that has confined women to the sphere of domestic life. This division of opinion becomes more evident in Cixous and Woolf's solutions to supporting women's writing. Cixous calls for nothing less than a gender revolution through literature: "When the "repressed" of their culture and society returns, it is an explosive return, absolutely destructive, disconcerting, with a force never yet unleashed and equal to the most fearsome of all repressions” (315). He states that their “fragility; a fragility, a vulnerability, equal to their incomparable intensity" allowed the women to "bombard the mosaic statue [of Freud] with their carnal and passionate bodily words" (315). Cixous's directions for the subject are without doubt segregationists: "I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man" (310). This does not mean writing like most women throughout the ages, which Cixous derides as indistinguishable from male or stereotypically feminine writing - "sensitive - intuitive - dreamy, etc." ( 311). Rather, women should create a new terrain in which they can celebrate themselves and their bodies: "It is time for women to begin marking their exploits in written and oral language... It is by writing, to and from women, and taking up the challenge of the word governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women… in a place other than silence" (312). Language is the key for Cixous; stating that he will blow up the “ Law” by Lacan, urges “Let it be done, now, in language” (316). “Woman has always functioned “within” the discourse of man,” he argues, and the most sexual imagery in the essay emerges in his appeal to reverse male language: “It's time for her to dislocate this 'inside'... biting that tongue with her own teeth to invent a language for herself to enter. And you will see how easily it will emerge from that "inside" - the "inside" where it once nestled so sleepily - to overflow. the lips will cover the foam" (316). Indeed, this passage is different from that of any male essayist: informal, poetic, full of erotic images that appropriate male ejaculation. This new "bisexual" language facilitates the new matter: "It is women who open up and benefit from this vatic bisexuality, which does not cancel differences but agitates them, pursues them, increases their number" (314). Liberating writing, she insists, must be constantly aware of liberation: "Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will destroy partitions, classes and rhetorics" (315). The reappropriation of the woman's body necessarily passes through the act of writing: «Write! and your selfish text will know itself better than flesh and blood” (317). While Cixous sees feminist writing as the key to feminist independence, Woolf argues that gender awareness should be limited to politics and has no place in art. Woolf, 1989.