How far we’ve come: Poems dedicated to Virginia Woolf No.3 #IWD2021

Dear Virginia
there’s a question
I would really like to ask
since you first put pen to paper
threw your gauntlet down
set us your task
and that is:
‘How far have we come?’

Is Mary Beton grown now?
Is she married?
How many children does she have?
Did she ever get to write
the words she longed to share with us?
did she give her children words
as their inheritance, or
matching socks and freshly laundered frocks?

Did Mary Seton graduate?
Did she receive an MBA?
Did she break the glass ceiling with her high heeled shoes
and botoxed forehead, rendered expressionless
with toxins
like a shop floor mannequin?
Perhaps she smiles a plastic smile
while reading us the news.

Did the sexual revolution set us free?
Free to be diseased, discarded, used?
Free to be ourselves
take risks (just like the men did)
break the rules,
get called a slut,
be wholly disregarded, ridiculed
left to grow old
with rotten rubber boobs?

There are women now in every profession
all is open to us, all
until we close our minds
and care for ‘who we should be’
instead of caring for the person
that we are:
only by attempting to do the latter
can we really see
how far we’ve come, and after all
we’ve only come
so far.

© Experimentsinfiction 2021, All Rights Reserved

This is the last in my Virginia Woolf Trilogy

In this poem, I considered some of the questions posed by Woolf in A Room of One’s Own, and tried to imagine what the answers might be given our present-day circumstances. I believe we really have made progress. But I also believe there is much progress still to be made.

This is of course written from my perspective as a white woman growing up in a privileged environment. There are many women today who are still denied the right to education, forced into arranged marriages, who have their bodies mutilated and who are sold into slavery. For sure we have a long way still to go.

Posted for International Women’s Day 2021, whose theme is #ChooseToChallenge. Interestingly, International Women’s Day is hardly celebrated in the UK. I only found out about it when I moved to Europe. If anyone would like to venture a suggestion as to why this might be, I’d love to hear it…

I am also linking up to dVerse poets’ pub for Poetics Tuesday, where Sanaa is hosting and has called for a verse epistle.

46 thoughts on “How far we’ve come: Poems dedicated to Virginia Woolf No.3 #IWD2021”

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  3. All so true, Ingrid. I’ve seen many changes in my life, and my mother saw even more.

    International Women’s Day has been mentioned in the U.S., but it’s not a top story.

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      2. In Spain there were marches and rallies and allsorts, but I think domestic violence is unfortunately a really big problem there.

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      4. There was one heartbreaking piece of street art where lots of shoes had been lined up to represent all the victims of domestic violence in the region that year; it was shocking 😳

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  4. It does, at times, seem like it is one step up two steps back, for the progress of women. Your poem is engaging and honest and you present truths that make me want to step back into Virginia’s world, where expressive foreheads were the norm and the only tools one needed to express for the masses (or self) was a pen and paper.

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  5. This is absolutely breathtaking, Ingrid! I love how touching, how deeply personal this poem is.. and so perfect for International Women’s Day! Especially this; “There are women now in every profession all is open to us, all
    until we close our minds and care for ‘who we should be’ instead of caring for the person that we are.” is spot on! Thank you so much for writing to the prompt! 💝💝

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  6. I have seen progress, and see it daily, but also the backlashes, sometimes I fear that it’s a lot of words from men who only want young women around them… and there are of course places where it’s far worse than in countries like ours.

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  7. Much progress has been made since Woolf wrote Room of One’s Own, but I agree that there is more still to be made, Ingrid. It is unacceptable that women are still denied the right to education, forced into arranged marriages, have their bodies mutilated, and are sold into slavery. Your verse Epistle asks pertinent questions, while at the same time exploring some of the women who have made a difference throughout history and I like how you contrasted them with the modern view of some women who ‘break the glass ceiling with [her] high heeled shoes / and botoxed forehead’.

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  8. my sister researced and wrote a book about the sufferget movement in kent. we ave come a way since but still more to do. i have contrabuted a piece to a project about electrifying women looking at a lot aspects to this subject. and other subject that make peolple of all kinds feellike second rate citerzans world wide. thanks for posting

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    1. Thanks Rog! Unfortunately the world in all its colours, creeds and races seems united on the subject of misogyny. But there are places where the situation is not so dire, thanks to movements like the Suffragettes

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  9. Ingrid, I believe in the beauty and in the power of the crone. Your poem is asking the right questions, drawing the right conclusions, and is a glowing proclamation of the worth of every female.

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  11. Some empowerment, those rotten rubber boobs. I think misogyny runs deeper even than racism in our culture. Y chromosomes are so precarious they need a big stick to cast any shadow.

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    1. Thank you for acknowledging that sad fact, Brendan. In all races, cultures and creeds there are misogynistic tendencies. Leads me to wonder if men are afraid what would happen to the Y chromosome if women were ‘allowed’ to thrive…

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  12. This is so good Ingrid. It really makes us look at ourselves and what we have become in the fight for equality. I particularly loved this …

    Did she break the glass ceiling with her high heeled shoes
    and botoxed forehead, rendered expressionless
    with toxins
    like a shop floor mannequin?

    A wonderful write ☺️

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  13. This is so good Ingrid. It really makes us look at ourselves and what we have become in the fight for equality. I particularly loved this …

    ‘Did she break the glass ceiling with her high heeled shoes
    and botoxed forehead, rendered expressionless
    with toxins
    like a shop floor mannequin?’

    A wonderful write ☺️

    PS I had trouble commenting ting on your site as you do mine, when I use my iPad. If they are duplicated, I
    am sorry. It just means I really tried! ☺️

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  15. I have championed Women’s Rights from the get. It fully blossomed in the 60’s, as I shook off and outgrew the Jim Crow mentality of the 50’s. I fully expected women to be further along in their social revolution. But we must remember not everyone is a liberal. 75 million people voted for TRUMP.

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  16. Perhaps I’m too old, but I feel all is not open to us at all. More certainly. But instead of just job opportunities, we still feel and live the responsibility as caregivers in a way few men do. That will take a long time and a whole different cultural definition of both manhood and womanhood to change. (K)

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    1. You’re right Kerfe: it’s only an illusion of all being open to us. When I worked full time I was running home at lunchtime to do the laundry, then running around with the kids all evening, and it’s just expected of us.

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  17. Poignant and timely. So many questions to challenge perspectives but perhaps choice is the one that escapes most minds. The right to choose ones future is where freedom exists.

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  18. Ingrid, what a kick-ass poem! I loved it! I can’t agree with the sentiment of the poem more! I’m a feminist born and bred and while I feel lucky to have been able to live the type of life I wanted to live, I know most women world-wide still suffer from the world’s widespread misogyny. Virginia W. would be proud to inspire such a poem, though perhaps disappointed with our progress.

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  19. You made me itching to reread A room of one’s own. I to think that even though we have gotten far in some respects, in others humankind have gone absolutely nowhere.

    I especially like “all is open to us, all
    until we close our minds
    and care for ‘who we should be’ ” I think that is one of the greatest traps for privileged women today.

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