A Room of One’s Own: Virginia Woolf

Q.) What does Virginia Woolf convey through her ‘A Room of One’s Own’?

Ans.) Woolf has been asked to speak about Women and Fiction to a group of female
students from the Cambridge colleges of Newnham and Girton. She explains how she came to think
about these themes as expressed in the title ‘A Room of One's Own’ when she sat down to think about
the subject. She considers what one means by "Women and Fiction", thinking that the most interesting
idea will be to consider all aspects intertwined, including women writers and fiction about women.

She soon realizes that she will not be able to offer any truth on the matter. She can only
offer her opinion, that a woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. She can
show how she came to this opinion and, through this journey, her audience may be able to draw their
own conclusions. She will use the method of fiction to describe this journey, since fiction is their
subject, and has invented her setting "Oxbridge" from two recognizable settings, Oxford and
Cambridge. She has also invented an "I" voice with which to tell the story. This "I" could be any woman,
she says, sitting on a riverbank near a college.

The narrator muses as she sits on this bank, about the nature of her mind, how it attaches
itself to a thought and obsesses over it. One particular thought distinguishes itself from the rest and
the narrator tries to capture it, like catching a fish. This idea becomes very exciting and precious to
her and she tries to keep it from slipping away. She finds herself walking rapidly over a lawn and is
soon apprehended by a Beadle, a guard, who tells her that only Fellows and Scholars are allowed on
the grass. She obeys and walks on the gravel instead, not yet indignant about the injustice of the
reserved lawn, but notices that her precious "fish" has disappeared.

She carries on her way and a certain essay by Charles Lamb comes to her mind. This essay
muses about how inconceivable it is that Milton's poetry ever had any word changed. The narrator
remembers that Lamb came to Oxbridge and his essays are kept in a library not far from where she is
walking. Thackeray's "most perfect" novel, Esmond, is also kept there. The narrator excitedly imagines
in these manuscripts some key to the authors' intent, but when she arrives at the famous library, she
is turned away because she is a woman.

The narrator finding leaves the scene in anger. She considers what to do instead but before
she can decide she hears organ music issuing from a chapel nearby. This time she doesn't wish to
approach, imagining she'll be turned away, and tries to appreciate the outside comings and goings of
the congregation.

She thinks about how such a grand collection of buildings exists – it is because of the
constant flow of money that the Oxbridge men are born into and then earn after they graduate. This
money goes into scholarship and traditions, repairs and luxuries. The college has sustained itself in
this way first from the very first Kings and noblemen to the modern scholars. The narrator is stopped
in her thoughts by the clock's strike. It is time for lunch and she heads to a luncheon party at the
college. She describes the sumptuous spread of food and wine in great detail, and takes special delight
in describing that "rich yellow flame" of intelligent, unhurried conversation.

Content, she moves to a window seat after lunch and notices a cat without a tail, strolling
past the window. This cat reminds her of the lunch party, which she thinks is also missing something
fundamental. She tries to figure out what this something is. In order to find out, she recalls the lunch
parties of the past, before the war, and remembers the guests making collectively a kind of humming
noise, which she realizes is quite poetic and can be put to the verse of Tennyson.
 (2)

Thinking of men and women humming Tennyson at lunchtime makes the burst out
laughing, and she has to excuse herself and explain that it was the strange cat that amused her. The
party breaks up and the guests head home. The narrator walks towards the imaginary women's college
"Fernham" and, with plenty of time before supper, thinks again about Tennyson's lines and then a
similarly beautiful verse of Christina Rossetti's.

The narrator believes that these verses are so beautiful because they make one recall
feelings of the past, of past luncheon parties for example. The reason that modern poetry has trouble
finding the same beauty is because it cannot evoke memories in the same way. She wonders when
people stopped "humming" at lunch. Was it after the war? Perhaps the sight of such stupidity and
ugliness made people stop humming. While busily thinking about the difference between truth and
illusion, the narrator misses the turn to Fernham, the women's college, so that she must retrace her
steps.

Finding herself at Fernham College, the October splendour of colours in the twilight bring a
romantic mood to the gardens and the narrator thinks she spots the famous feminist Jane Harrison.
But she is interrupted from her exciting academic reverie by the arrival of her soup for dinner. As she
did with the luncheon, the narrator describes her supper at the women's college in great detail, but
this meal is much humbler. Not only is the height of the feast a bowl of prunes and custard, but the
conversation is also lacking.

The narrator and her friend Mary Seton retire to a sitting room and "repair some of the
damages" by discussing people. But the narrator's mind is haunted by the image of the masons and
money-makers that founded and preserved the men's college. She guides the conversation towards
the problem of the women's colleges. Mary Seton recites the financial history of her college, which
basically involves constant and belittling fundraising efforts.

The narrator considers what their mothers had been doing that stopped them creating a
legacy, with colleges and scholarships like the men had. She realizes that it was family life – there
wouldn't even be a Mary Seton if her mother had wanted to create a legacy, or Mary would have had
to have given up the pleasures of her childhood, which depended on her mother. But, to hypothesize
about the legacy their mothers would have made is useless – it was impossible for them to earn
money.

Putting blame aside, the narrator and Mary Seton gaze out of the window at the awe-
inspiring college buildings, and ponder the generations of penniless mothers. The narrator remembers
all the sights and feelings of her day, and how unpleasant it was to be locked out of the library that
morning, but eventually decides she must "roll up the crumpled skin of the day" and retires to bed.

As she predicted, the narrator has found that truth, cause, and blame are difficult to attribute
in the case of women and fiction. This brings her very early on in her argument to the realization that
she will have to find some other way to reconcile the question. So, gazing at the scene of her subject,
she lets her feelings and sensations come to the fore.

******