Although women made much politic progress during the Victorian era and the early twentieth century, the women's movement did not become more focused on the woman herself and personal liberation until after the First World War.   It was then that feminists such as Virginia Woolf began to emerge.   These women were challenging the former ideals of domesticity and femininity.   For example, Virginia Woolf directly criticizes London society in Mrs. Dalloway by demonstrating the negative effects of domesticity on her protagonist Clarissa.   She goes even further in her work, Orlando , which explores gender roles from the medieval period through the Victorian Era and into the 1920's.   In this novel, Woolf confronts the separate sphere ideology head on by changing Orlando from a man into a woman and watching the same character lose her rights simply by changing physically.   Although Woolf serves as only one example, she is representative of the shift in the feminist movement.  

While this type of feminism was an incredible improvement, there was little change in the way society treated women.   Women were still underpaid and did not have equal opportunities to men.   After WWII, the women were again forced to regress.   When the war began women filled in for the men going off to war, picking up many more responsibilities and earning more money.   When the war ended however the men coming home wanted to settle down and retreat back to the old standards of living in which women stayed home and focused on the family.   This emphasis on family is reflected in the story of Marry Poppins.   While written in the 60's about the early 20 th century, this story captures the attitude of the majority in the 60's of female sacrifice for the family perfectly.   At the end of the story the mother, Mrs. Banks, who happens to be a suffragette ties her suffrage sash to the back of a kite and decides that her focus should be on the family.   This willingness on the part of Mrs. Banks to conform back into domesticity and sacrifice her beliefs is representative of this second was of regression.   This sudden loss of outside responsibility and the renewed importance of family made it all the more difficult for women to prove themselves socially and match their political freedom with equal social freedom.   While the struggle for social equality has come a long way since the Victorian era, women still struggle for equality in many ways and are often objectified today.