Question

Read the passage from A Doll’s House.

Nora: Well, then I have found other ways of earning money. Last winter I was lucky enough to get a lot of copying to do; so I locked myself up and sat writing every evening until quite late at night. Many a time I was desperately tired; but all the same it was a tremendous pleasure to sit there working and earning money. It was like being a man.

Read the passage from A Room of One’s Own.

She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager—a fat, looselipped man—guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting—no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted—you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft.

What central idea is explored in both passages?

the idea that writing was exhausting work for men and women alike
the idea that women were able to earn their independence by writing
the idea that women did not typically have the opportunity to do professional work
the idea that women felt pressured to make their own work the lowest priority

Answer 1

the idea that women did not typically have the opportunity to do professional work

Both passages emphasize barriers: Nora has to work secretly and compares it to being a man, while the actress in Woolf’s piece is openly denied training and ridiculed—showing limited professional opportunities for women.