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A room of one's own

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In 1928, Virginia Woolf was asked to speak on the topic of "women and fiction". The result, based upon two papers she delivered to literary societies at Newnham and Girton in October of that year, was "A Room of One's Own", an extended essay on women as both writers of fiction and as characters in fiction. And, while Woolf suggests that, "when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth," her essay is, in fact, an extraordinarily even-handed, thoughtful and perceptive reflection on the topic.

Woolf begins with a simple and enigmatic opinion: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unresolved." From this spare beginning, Woolf deftly explores the difference between how women had been portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived in the world, during the preceding centuries. "A very queer, composite being 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 a slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger."

The source of dissonance between how women were portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived, was the fact that most fiction prior to the nineteenth century was written by men. As Woolf astutely points out, "[i]t was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex." Woolf's observation is no feminist polemic; it is, rather, an incisive comment on how fiction was impoverished when it was written only by men.

Even when fiction was written by women, it was powerfully influenced by patriarchal notions of virtue and the proper role of women. Thus, Woolf suggests there could be no female Shakespeare in sixteenth century England because no women would be tolerated who lived in the real world like the Bard. "No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational-for chastity may be a fetish invented by societies for unknown reasons-but were none the less inevitable." Indeed, this "relic of the sense of chastity" dictated that more daring female authors-George Eliot, George Sand, Currer Bell-maintain anonymity as late as the nineteenth century.

When female writers did find a "room of their own," they were still limited by social and cultural imperatives. Thus, the first of the great women novelists-Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot-wrote largely from the drawing room, not from the experiences of the larger world-the very conditions of their writing life being as cramped as the their restricted lives. As Woolf notes, in commenting on Charlotte Bronte, "[s]he knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted, they were withheld."

Ultimately, Woolf suggests that the "true" nature of women will only be approached in fiction when women are sufficiently independent-not only in a financial sense, but in the sense of being freed from societal and cultural restraints-to explore the quotidian, the everyday lives of people in the world. This is the aspect of the fictional world that, in Woolf's view, was absent from the male-dominated novel prior to the nineteenth century.

Woolf further suggests that the "true" nature of fiction is expressed only through those writers who can transcend their narrow sexual roles-become "man-womanly" or "woman-manly"-so as to convey the fullness of the real world. As Woolf notes, "Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all of its faculties." Based on this criterion, Woolf promulgates her own canon of English male writers, a canon which includes Shakespeare, Keats, Sterne, Cowper, Lamb, Coleridge, and Proust (who "was perhaps wholly androgynous, if not perhaps a little too much of a woman").

"A Room of One's Own" is, in sum, a fascinating, thoughtful and perceptive essay on women and fiction written by one of the Twentieth century's most formidable writers and thinkers, a woman who truly succeeded in creating a room of her own in the canon of modern English literature.

Some of Virginia Woolf's writing is difficult for the modern reader to plough through - loooong sentences, convoluted construction, excessive naval gazing (in fictional form). But A Room of One's Own, a very long essay about feminism, independence, writing, and becoming one's own person, is actually quite readable, quite educational, and quite wonderful. The reader, at least this one, feels she's in the presence of a great mind at work as it ruminates on and on about these topics in a somewhat rambling but engaging personal reflection. Although written in 1929, the situation for women artists hasn't changed all that much, so it's far from dated.
A must-read.

In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf says that in order for a woman to write fiction, she must have money and a room of her own; I believe that to be, or to understand, an intellectual woman in this century, one must read this book. Unlike a sad number of feminist writers, Woolf does not make the mistake of tearing down the accomplishments of men in order to make room for those of women. Indeed, she speaks eloquently against just that danger throughout "A Room of One's Own," which is partly what allows it to stand not only as a feminist classic, but also as a classic piece of both literature and literary criticism. It is not often that an essay reaches creative heights great enough to establish itself equally as a work of art and an intellectual effort, but Woolf has done it here. She does not waste her words or her energy on destructive, angry prattling. She writes with a depth of humanity that challenges us to be better writers, better thinkers, and better people.

In 1928, Virginia Woolf was asked to speak on the topic of "women and fiction". The result, based upon two papers she delivered to literary societies at Newnham and Girton in October of that year, was "A Room of One's Own", an extended essay on women as both writers of fiction and as characters in fiction. And, while Woolf suggests that, "when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth," her essay is, in fact, an extraordinarily even-handed, thoughtful and perceptive reflection on the topic.

Woolf begins with a simple and enigmatic opinion: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unresolved." From this spare beginning, Woolf deftly explores the difference between how women had been portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived in the world, during the preceding centuries. "A very queer, composite being 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 a slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger."

The source of dissonance between how women were portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived, was the fact that most fiction prior to the nineteenth century was written by men. As Woolf astutely points out, "[i]t was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex." Woolf's observation is no feminist polemic; it is, rather, an incisive comment on how fiction was impoverished when it was written only by men.

Even when fiction was written by women, it was powerfully influenced by patriarchal notions of virtue and the proper role of women. Thus, Woolf suggests there could be no female Shakespeare in sixteenth century England because no women would be tolerated who lived in the real world like the Bard. "No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational-for chastity may be a fetish invented by societies for unknown reasons-but were none the less inevitable." Indeed, this "relic of the sense of chastity" dictated that more daring female authors-George Eliot, George Sand, Currer Bell-maintain anonymity as late as the nineteenth century.

When female writers did find a "room of their own," they were still limited by social and cultural imperatives. Thus, the first of the great women novelists-Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot-wrote largely from the drawing room, not from the experiences of the larger world-the very conditions of their writing life being as cramped as the their restricted lives. As Woolf notes, in commenting on Charlotte Bronte, "[s]he knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted, they were withheld."

Ultimately, Woolf suggests that the "true" nature of women will only be approached in fiction when women are sufficiently independent-not only in a financial sense, but in the sense of being freed from societal and cultural restraints-to explore the quotidian, the everyday lives of people in the world. This is the aspect of the fictional world that, in Woolf's view, was absent from the male-dominated novel prior to the nineteenth century.

Woolf further suggests that the "true" nature of fiction is expressed only through those writers who can transcend their narrow sexual roles-become "man-womanly" or "woman-manly"-so as to convey the fullness of the real world. As Woolf notes, "Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all of its faculties." Based on this criterion, Woolf promulgates her own canon of English male writers, a canon which includes Shakespeare, Keats, Sterne, Cowper, Lamb, Coleridge, and Proust (who "was perhaps wholly androgynous, if not perhaps a little too much of a woman").

"A Room of One's Own" is, in sum, a fascinating, thoughtful and perceptive essay on women and fiction written by one of the Twentieth century's most formidable writers and thinkers, a woman who truly succeeded in creating a room of her own in the canon of modern English literature.

Virginia Woolf is a writer of intelligence and grace. A Room of One's Own is a skinny little treasure of a book with words and wisdom that will stay with the reader long after it is read. The essay contained in the book is the result of two papers that Ms. Woolf read to the Arts Society at newnham and Odtaa at Girton (England) in October of 1928. She was asked to speak about the topic of "Women and Fiction", and after doing so, she expanded her papers and later published them as this book.

Woolf begins the essay by writing, "I soon saw that [the subject of women and fiction] had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer- to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point- a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction... At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial- and any question about sex is that- one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opionion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conslusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker."

It is in this straightforward and honest manner that Woolf writes about women and fiction. Although the speech was given and the book was published in 1929, all of its points are still important for women- and especially women writers and artists- today. In A Room of One's Own Woolf examines classic literary works of the past and wonders why most, until the 19th Century, were written by men, and why most of the works published by women in the 19th Century were fiction. She comes to the logical conclusion that women in the past had little to no time to write because of their childbearing and raising responsibilities. There is also the fact that they were not educated and were forbidden or discouraged from writing. When they did begin to write, they only had the common sitting rooms of Elizabethan homes to do so in, which did not provide much solitude or peace of mind, as it was open to any interruption and distraction that came along.

Woolf argues passionately that true independence comes with economic well-being. This is true for countries, governments, individuals, and writers, especially female writers. Without financial security it is impossible for any writer to have the luxury of writing for writing's sake. It is also a very inspiring book for any aspiring write to read. I end this review with Virginia Woolf's own hopes for women in the future:

"... I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."

(If you liked this review, please read my other book reviews under my Amazon profile...)

I was terrified when I found out that I had to read this book for my women's studies class because my mom told me that Virginia Woolf was like James Joyce stylistically. When I actually started reading A Room of Ones Own, I was pleasantly surprised by the intimacy and smoothness of Woolf's writing, and her clear logic compared with the rigidity of "the old boy's club." She offers a simple, well thought-out argument for why a woman needs financial independence and a room of her own in order to achieve what men can achieve artistically and academically. The depressing part about A Room of Ones Own is a lot of what she writes about the status of women today compared to that of men is still true.

70 years have passed since the first publication of "A Room of One's Own," and yet we have not seen as many dramatic changes, let alone improvements, in social mentality as early feminist thinkers like Virginia Woolf wished to provoke to establish women's new role as equal to men's. She argued that the reason why there was no female Shakespeare is not that women are biologically inferior to men but that there was simply no "room" for women to develop themselves, both metaphorically and realistically speaking. Therefore, in this book she encourages women to have a room of their own and a stable income to ensure a career. However, women, in the past as well as the present, have long been "grounded" by men. For a woman to have a room of her own and a stable income means that the woman is invading (from male chauvinistic viewpoint) men's territory, and this kind of behavior (and thoughts) is not to be allowed in male-dominated societies.

Early feminist thinkers like Virginia Woolf provided later generations with iron-cast proof (as far as I'm concerned) that women are no "second sex" by pointing out the false discriminations men put against women for men's own convenience. (Ironically, I see men suffer as well from doing so.) Thinkers like Virginia Woolf provided "rooms" to develop feminist thoughts, and these rooms also provoke controversies and debates because feminist way of thinking is revolutionary. At any rate, there would be no improvements of women's role in society if there were no Virginia Woolf and other first-wave feminist thinkers.

At the end of the twentieth century, in spite of the burgeoning "industry" of feminism, the real condition of women appears to be quite depressing. The real condition of women goes like this: "During the last decades women's representation in education has grown enormously but so has our [their] participation in low paid and part-time work. So that, for example, the percentage of women in German higher education has doubled yet the degree of confidence German women express for women in non-traditional jobs is one of the lowest in Europe...," and "similarly feminist literary criticism has created a lively and substantial body of work in the last decades but continues to exist in a hostile and often marginal academic place." ("A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism", 1994: 290) One cannot fail to see (if one is willing to open his or her eyes) that we have made just a tiny bit of progress since the first-wave feminism. There is room for improvement, indeed, but people's ignorance of women's real position in society, women's subordinate educational, economical, and political conditions, and the overall social status of women being secondary, must first be recognized. In this sense, Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" appears to be especially inspiring.

In my opinion, feminism is not only for or about women, it is also for and about men, because the world is composed of both sexes, and men suffer (without understanding, because of stupidity) from the traditional, male chauvinistic attitude as well. What is important is that feminist way of thinking is a breakthrough, revolutionary philosophy that challenges the way we perceive the world for centuries. "A Room of One's Own" opens my mind's eye; it is, no doubt, a classic that must be read.

I had no idea who this woman was, other than a generic realization that she was a writer of the early 1900s. Many months ago, my life fell apart and I ended up living in a friend's home while I sorted out the pieces of my messy life.

One day, my dear friend handed me this book and said, "You'll like this."

I was intimidated. After all, it's Virginia Woolf and only really smart people can read Woolf's writings. But I decided to read what I could and glaze over the rest. I ended up tucking myself into bed with this book every night and reading it again and again and again.

Yes, Woolf was a Victorian-era writer and the prose is thick and heavy-laden with Victorian verbosity, but her powerful writing style shines through the complicated sentences and nuanced lexicon.

My very favorite part was the top of page 60. After reading that, I felt that Ms. Woolf had reached through the decades and touched my very soul. If you're a writer and a sensitive soul (as I am), you'll understand when you read it. :)

Next semester, I'm teaching a course on writing and plan to quote Ms. Woolf extensively. This book will be well used and recommended to my students. And I highly recommend it to you, too.

Rose

author, The Houses That Sears Built

Ah, Virginia! Never is she more charming or likeable than when she writes this book. This is a very important book nowadays, I think, when a lot of women who have gained a lot from the feminist movement are now saying "I'm not a feminist", perhaps because the word is now associated with aggression and intolerance. Let's not get into that argument! But anyway, A Room of One's Own, is cool because it makes you feel good about being a woman, and it highlights so gently and kindly and humorously the biases that may exist in your own mind and in society around you about what women can and can't and should do. I read somewhere that VW was motivated to cheer up young women who seemed so depressed. It works! I don't know what other people think: is there irony in the way she talks about how women must flatter and please and be charming to get their way; and then she herself is so flattering and charming in this book? I don't know. I learnt a lesson, though, about how to argue. I wish VW were alive. I've wanted for years now to contact her and say thankyou, and then to tell her how things are going these days.

In this book, Virginia Woolf explores the following thesis: "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom." Writing at a time when, as she herself stated in her diary, writing was not a respectable occupation for women, Woolf showed great courage in propounding this profoundly simple, pithy book.

The book began as a lecture which she prepared for a girl's school. Asked to lecture on the subject of women and fiction, she determined to propound her theory that financial independence was necessary for the creation of genius. In her way of thinking, women throughout history may have had genius, but were never given the opportunity to develop it, being always dependant upon men for their social and financial standing. She urged women to earn their own living through writing; to break free of these social and financial constraints. However, in speaking out against the male-dominated intellectual scene, she did so without anger, without acrimony. Her usual good humor and simplicity, found so clearly in her diary and letters, shine throughout the book, making it invaluable not only as a social statement, but also as a precious insight into her personality. She is in turn serious, playful, mocking, and tender.

A Room of One's Own is not so applicable today as it was seventy-five years ago, but it is still valuable as an historical document; as a moral boost for aspiring young women writers; and as a further insight into the character of Virginia Woolf.