Whitaker the Impeccable
The vein of irony runs rich and is cut deeply throughout this essay as Woolf slices through her essay with a ferociously bitter sense of humor. After detailing the section of Whitaker’s Almanac which lists all the jobs paid by the government and their associated salary levels in a way almost as tedious as it sounds, she finally reaches her when point that though that list of vocations covering the gamut of just about every possible career path one could think of, what is conspicuously missing are the jobs of wife, mother and daughter without whom, Woolf points out, the entire State would collapse. Then, she lights the torch that is about to burns down the whole premise of the Almanac when she suggests that Joseph Whitaker, compiler of the Almanac, simply does not consider the work done by wives, mothers and daughters worthy of being paid out of tax revenue. And then, she replies to her own rhetorical question with a bomb that sends sharp shrapnel of irony directly at Mr. Whitaker flesh and blood:
“Can it be possible? Or have we convicted Whitaker, the impeccable, of errata?”
Wells, Perhaps Resistance WOULD be Futile…
H.G. Wells was one of the world’s literary lions and a respected political observer as well when Woolf wrote her essay. Despite this, Woolf does not retract her sharp blade in deference to his status. Responding to the suggestion by the famous writer that there had as yet been no effective women’s movement aimed at stemming the tide of encroaching fascism, Woolf flicks her blade and cleanly slices his respected head right off his shoulders by pointing out to men that…
“….in spite of the vote and the wealth which that vote must have brought with it, you have not ended war; in spite of the vote and the power which that vote must have brought with it, you have not resisted the practical obliteration of your freedom by Fascists or Nazis.”
Actually, this is a tough call. Although the response is clearly intended ironically, it is also painfully sincere in its delineation of a hard truth.
The Handoff
Being the artist that she is (as well as the promoter in this very essay of a Society of Outsiders) Woolf feels no compunction about handing over a great ironic line to someone. That someone being Mary Kingsley, a successful women despite no organized education, whom Woolf situates as her symbol of gender inequality on the subject of educational opportunities. One level of irony at work here is the larger one of Mary’s story in which despite having absolutely none of the advantages for education offered her brother, she turned out to be at least as successful. The more direct irony is in giving Mary the last word on the subject:
“I don’t know if I ever revealed the fact to you that being allowed to learn German was ALL the paid-for education I ever had. £2,000 was spent on my brother’s. I still hope not in vain.”
Education
Woolf consistently attacks the failure of the academic system with irony in the essay and perhaps with no greater insight than when she addresses the near-universal convention about education that is most easily agreed upon: that education is by definition always a good thing:
“Education is by no means a positive value; it is not good in all circumstances, and good for all people; it is only good for some people and for some purposes.”
The Church
Perhaps the single greatest moment of irony in a work overflowing with it has been reserved by Woolf for one the biggest targets: the Christian church. First she sets up her target in what proves to be a most usual and effective way: by using their own words against them. Woolf quotes from “Women and the Ministry, Some Considerations on the Report of the Archbishops’ Commission on the Ministry of Women” which concludes with the assertive affirmation of longstanding tradition that women are not suitable for the ministry because were they allowed to be so, most males in any given congregation would be “unduly conscious of her sex.” A reader can almost picture Woolf in their minds rolling up her sleeves, taking a drag on her cigarette, maybe wiping a bit of anger sweat off her brow and smashing out the irony on her typewriter as she observes in her response that:
“In the opinion of the Commissioners, therefore, Christian women are more spiritually minded than Christian men — a remarkable, but no doubt adequate, reason for excluding them from the priesthood.”
