"I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense." Virginia Woolf’s rovocative statement about her intentions in writing Mrs. Dalloway has regularly been ignored by the critics, since it highlights an aspect of her literary interests very different from the traditional picture of the "poetic" novelist concerned with examining states of reverie and vision and with following the intricate pathways of individual consciousness. But Virginia Woolf was a realistic as well as a poetic novelist, a satirist and social critic as well as a visionary: literary critics’ cavalier dismissal of Wooff’s social vision will not withstand scrutiny.
In her novels, Woolf is deeply engaged by the questions of how individuals are shaped (or deformed)by their social environments, how historical forces impinge on people’s lives, how class, wealth, and gender help to determine people’s fates. Most of her novels are rooted in a realistically rendered social setting and in a precise historical time.
Woolf’s focus on society has not been generally recognized because of her intense antipathy to propaganda in art. The pictures of reformers in her novels are usually satiric or sharply critical. Even when Woolf is fundamentally sympathetic to their causes, she portrays people anxious to reform their society and possessed of a message or program as arrogant or dishonest, unaware of how their political ideas serve their own psychological needs. Her Writer’s Diary notes:" the only honest people are the artists." Whereas "these social reformers and philanthropists".., harbor.., discreditable desires under the disguise of loving their kind .... Woolf detested what she called "preaching" in fiction, too, and criticized novelist D. H. Lawrence (among others)for working by this method.
Woolf’s own social criticism is expressed in the language of observation rather than in direct commentary, since for her, fiction is a contemplative, not an active art. She describes phenomena and provides materials for a judgment about society and social issues: it is the reader’s work to put the observations together and understand the coherent point of view behind them. As a moralist, Woolf, works by indirection subtly underufining officially accepted mores, mocking, suggesting, calling into question, rather than asserting, advocating, bearing witness: hers is the satirist’s art.
Woolf’s literary models were acute social observers like Chekhov and Chaucer. As she put it in The Common Reader, "It is safe to say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another because of anything Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, we are absorbing morality at every pore." Like Chaucer, Woolf chose to understand as well as to judge, to know her society root and branch--a decision crucial in order to produce art rather than polemic.
The author implies that a major element of the satirist’s art is the satirist’s ______.

A. People now seldom have critical and value laden thinking.
B. Students cannot learn English grammar and rhetoric through watching TV.
C. The literature remains unaffected by TV in America.
D. Jerry Mander suggests that the government should ban television.

As a student, Du Bois was considered something of a prodigy who excelled beyond the capabilities of his white peers. He found work as a correspondent for New York newspapers, and slowly began to realize the inhibitions of social boundaries he was expected to observe every step of the way. When racism tried to take his pride and dignity, he became more determined to make sure society ’recognized his achievements.
Clearly, Du Bois showed great promise, and although he dreamt of attending Harvard, some influential members Of his community arranged for his education at Fisk University in Nashville. His experiences at Fisk changed his life, and he discovered his fate as a leader of the black struggle to free his people from oppression. At Fisk, Du Bois became acquainted with many sons and daughters of former slaves, who felt the pain of oppression and shared his sense of cultural and spiritual tradition. In the South, he saw his people being driven to a status of little difference from slavery, and saw them terrorized at the polls. He taught school during the summers in the eastern portion of Tennessee, and saw the suffering firsthand. He then resolved to dedicate his life to fighting the terrible racial oppression that held the black people down, both economically and politically.
Du Bois’s determination was rewarded with a scholarship to Harvard, where he began the first scientific sociological studies in the United States. He felt that through science, he could dispel the irrational prejudices and ignorance that prevented racial equality. He went on to create great advancements in the study of race relations, but oppression continued with segregation laws, lynching, and terror tactics on the rise. Du Bois then formed the Niagara Movement, and in 1909, was a vital part in establishing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was also the editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis from 1910 to 1934. In this stage of his life, he encouraged direct assaults on the legal, political, and economic system, which he felt blossomed out of the exploitation of the poor and powerless black community.
He became the most important black protest leader of the first half of the 20th century. His views clashed with Booker T. Washington, who felt that the black people of America had to simply accept discrimination, and hope to eventually earn respect and equality through hard work and success. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, criticizing Booker, claiming that his ideas would lead to a perpetuation of oppression instead of freeing the black people from it. Du Bois’s criticism lead to a branching out of the black civil rights movement, Booker% conservative followers, and a radical following of his critics.
Du Bois had established the Black .Nationalism that was the inspiration for all black empowerment throughout the civil rights movement, but had begun during the progressive era. Although the movement that germinated from his ideas may have taken on a more violent form, Web Du Bois felt strongly that every human being could shape their own destinies with determination and hard work. He inspired hope by declaring that progress would come with the success of the small struggles for a better life.