<P> In another section, describing the work of a fictional woman writer, Mary Carmichael, Woolf deliberately invokes lesbianism: "Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these --' Chloe liked Olivia ...' Do not start . Do not blush . Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen . Sometimes women do like women ." Woolf references the obscenity trial and public uproar resulting from the publishing of Radclyffe Hall's lesbian - themed novel, The Well of Loneliness published in 1928 . Before she can discuss Chloe liking Olivia, the narrator, has to be assured that Sir Chartres Biron, the magistrate of Hall's obscenity trial is not in the audience: "Are there no men present? Do you promise the figure of Sir Chartres Biron is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell you ..." </P> <P> Woolf scholar and feminist critic Jane Marcus believes Woolf was giving Radclyffe Hall and other writers a demonstration of how to discuss lesbianism discreetly enough to avoid obscenity trials; "Woolf was offering her besieged fellow writer a lesson in how to give a lesbian talk and write a lesbian work and get away with it ." Marcus describes the atmosphere of Woolf's arrival and presence at the women's college with her lover Vita Sackville - West as "sapphic ." Woolf is comfortable discussing lesbianism in her talks with the women students because she feels a women's college is a safe and essential place for such discussions . </P> <P> In this paragraph, Woolf sums up the stark contrast her research has uncovered between how women are idealised in fiction written by men, and how patriarchal society has treated them in real life: </P> <P> Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time . Indeed if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some would say greater . But this is woman in fiction . In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room . A very queer, composite being thus emerges . Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant . She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history . She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger . Some of the most inspired words and profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read; scarcely spell; and was the property of her husband . </P>

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