The project
June 20, 1906: Virginia Woolf paints in words the condition of the women of the time.
And she leaves us with the same cultural heritage
That of not being “one of the many women crowded in the shadows.”
It’s up to you now to tell your being woman today, express your feminine condition through a simple daily diary.
Virginia Woolf Project was born to give you voice.
THE ORIGIN: JUNE 20, 1906
Virginia Woolf Project takes inspiration from ‘Phyllis and Rosamond’, a short story where the English writer Virginia Stephen Woolf deals with the condition of five characters she describes all females: an “initial mistake” they will have to regret for life spent “on their parents’ behalf”.
They are five sisters. Two of them are called “the daughters at home”, condemned to submit to the will of their parents. The living rooms are their “professional arena” where to look for husband. Two of them decide “to cultivate their brains, go to college, do well there, and marry professors “. The fifth marries young.
But the universal value of the first story that the English writer wrote at the age of 24 is in the prologue.
Each of us, she writes, should “write down the details of a day’s work; posterity will be as glad of the catalogue as we should be if we had such a record” dating back, for example, to 1500.
Virginia Woolf makes it a gender issue right away. Portraits of this kind “are almost invariably of the male sex”. while women are puppets in showmans’s hands. “It seems worth while to take as model one of those many women who crowded in the shade”, writes Woolf, describing the typical day spent by five young women on June 20, 1906.
WHY: A GREAT FRESCO OF THE FEMININE
Virginia Woolf Project collects this cultural heritage and relaunches the task of keeping track of women’s stories, hosting tales or simple diaries of life, coming from anywhere in the world, in a website destined to become a great fresco of the ‘feminine’ of this era.
There are no limits: the only common denominator, writing the story of a day, must be the reflection on own condition as a woman today and on the constraints that society imposes.
HOW: GET OUT OF THE SHADOW
The dominant patriarchal thought, fatally destines females to procreation and care without being able to break the crystal roof, it doesn’t matter if you are daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, companions or singles, students or workers, precarious or unemployed.
Virginia Woolf Project gives every woman the opportunity to fix a day’s still image and leave it to posterity sending images, short writings, video stories, graphic novels, creative contributions.
The basic languages are English and Italian, but contributions will be received in each language.
Virginia Woolf Project, will re-launch each story through its own social channels Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube to promote the project.
WHO: ALL WOMEN IN THE WORLD
Virginia Woolf Project invites adult women of all ages and of all nationalities to tell their own day in a gender perspective.
The story, by words or images, can be created as a personal diary or, using the formula of the famous english writer, describing imaginary characters but representative of one’s social environment.
(Special thanks to Suzanne Lega Hanson for the translation)
