Women that melted into the air: criticizing Marshall Berman’s critic of modernity

Abstract

This article claims that the mainstream theories on modernity speak with a male voice by reflecting the male gaze on modernity. For that reason, the main aim of this article is trying to reveal the perception of a female writer on this subject and analyze the four essays of Virginia Woolf on London entitled as The Docks of London, Oxford Street Tide, Great Men's Houses, and Portrait of a Londoner that are collected under the title of The London Scene (1932). In order to explain the perspective of a female writer under the gaze of masculine powers in the beginning of twentieth century, the article concentrates on the image of women created by patriarchal society and explains Virginia Woolf's writings on domesticated, male-dependant, working class outsiders in the beginning of a new era.