Answer:
D. Women have been held back by men's view of what they can do.
Explanation:
Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" is a feminist piece that she wrote about how women were perceived and expected to be during Elizabethan times. In asserting the ability of women, if not more than the men, in any aspect of life, Woolf presents a hypothetical argument for what might be if women were given equal opportunities as men.
In the given passage, she presents a situation where a father refused to let his daughter "leave home and become a writer, painter, or scholar...." In expecting 'the feminine gender' to be at home, Woolf points out the patriarchal society of her time. She continues, "there was an enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect that nothing could be expected of women intellectually." And in emphasizing how the masculine society "expected [nothing] of women intellectually", she explicitly proclaims that women were indeed deemed inferior and less intellectual.
So, the statement that helps to develop the main idea is that women have been held back from reaching great heights by the views of men and the patriarchal society of their times.
Thus, the correct answer is option D.
