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    A Room of One's Own
    A Room of One's Own
    A Room of One's Own
    Ebook149 pages2 hours

    A Room of One's Own

    By Virginia Woolf

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    About this ebook

    The celebrated author of To the Lighthouse examines the role of women in literature in this critical essay that paved the way for modern feminism.

    During the week of the release of her novel Orlando, author Virginia Woolf gave two lectures at the University of Cambridge on the subject of “women and fiction.” Those talks served as the basis for this extended essay.

    In “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf offers a feminist critique of society as she discusses women’s history in literature and writing. She imagines if William Shakespeare had a sister who was just as smart and talented as he was. Yet given the nature of society in Shakespeare’s era, she doesn’t have the means to express her creativity and thus dies without writing down a word. Ultimately Woolf argues that women must have intellectual and financial freedom: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateJan 1, 2024
    ISBN9781504081436
    Author

    Virginia Woolf

    VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

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    Reviews for A Room of One's Own

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    • 5/5
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    • 5/5
      I think I read this before, but the memory is gone. A very good catalog of why we do not have a continuous history of women, before the 19th century. Prejudice, discounting, work and 'place' all feature. Her pattern in the book is to pose questions, one at a time, to figure out formally what we all can gather from our own lives. A modest income and a room of one's own, she concludes, is the necessary condition.

      It makes me think of Tillie Olsen, however, and her short story "I Stand Here Ironing" (right title?). She struggled with all the time eating problems of her life and responsibilities, and still got it down in text. And so often about those very struggles. Sigh. Now I have to go read her stories again.
    • 2/5
      I hated this stream of conscience nonsense. I also had to read it in 10th grade, so maybe I wasn't in a great mindset to appreciate it. Fun fact: the essay for this was the only big assignment I've ever flat out refused to do.
    • 3/5
      I have so many thoughts and mixed feelings about this essay. While I don't think stream of consciousness is really my thing when it comes to preferred reading; I find myself writing this way often, so I've come to understand a couple things. Firstly, when one is writing in this sort of way, one tends to contradict oneself. Secondly, the reader is required to pay a good amount of attention a good deal of the time---and that can be difficult.

      If Woolf is allowed to write in such an eruption of thoughts, I will feel free to respond in kind.

      Concerning the "Feminism" of this piece: I believe that if today’s feminists read the whole thing, instead of a few snippets in a college anthology, they’d find that Woolf is not necessarily pleading their case here. Her narrator might be a sort of whiny entitled one at times, but I think Woolf's point of view is clear at the end. While she lays out a good case for the difficulties formerly faced by women writers, and points out how there's still work to be done, she also lists quite a few reforms that have been made since long before her audience came of age. She’s not complaining about the lack of opportunity for women so much as she’s upset about the lack of women taking the opportunity.

      What constitutes opportunity is a matter of opinion. Some say the opportunity lies in the freedom a childless, single woman has to do what she wants with her time---in this case, writing; while others say opportunity is being taken care of by a doting husband while raising a family. I’ve been blessed with both a doting husband/family and the freedom to do what I want with my time.

      I do have means and a room of my own---this book stirs in me the feeling of obligation to make more use of it for the sake of all the other women who didn’t and don't.

      In today's society, I don't think our options are either singleness and freedom or being strapped to a family schedule. There’s a third option: marry a man who values your brain, creativity, and time. Train your children to respect your creative time and, better yet, make some of their own. A large amount of children are not the problem. Mismanaged time, selfish husbands, lousy parenting, these might be the problem. So ladies, choose wisely. When my husband is off work, he occupies the children so I can write or film. He values my mind, ministry, and interests. I value them, too, and I'm not afraid to make my needs known. Women of a century ago may not have had this choice, but the women of today do and using this essay as a rant for today is silly, entitled, and difficult to take seriously.

      She alluded to men who go to the office at ten and come home at half past four to do what they want. This is not impossible, ladies. Train your children! Establish a schedule! Take control over your time so you can do this too. Obviously these men “trained” those around them---do the same!

      In Woolf’s day it may have been a lack of opportunity, but today it's apathy. But, maybe then too.
      Without thinkers like Woolf, both men and women, we wouldn’t have opportunities now. But one must have the desire and see the value to think those thoughts. Some didn’t fight then because they didn’t care. Some don’t utilize opportunities now because they have other opportunities to care about. The more time I spend on eternal things, the less I care about these “scholarly” things that once seemed so important to me. Still, the need for quiet writing time is one I struggle to suppress. The guilt of taking time from my family battles with the guilt of taking time from myself, no matter how well trained anyone is.

      In my opinion, writing (or any other creative pursuit) is a privilege to be enjoyed after your work is done. If you are provided for, you probably have children to care for. If you provide for yourself, you must do that work first. Who provided for Virginia Woolf? It sounds like she and her husband worked together on their publishing company and didn’t make a whole lot of money. She might have been "poor" in her own eyes, but the woman literally had her own writing cottage. Please.

      I think if you want to write, you make time to write. No excuses. Woolf mentions Jane Austen several times. Jane Austen had neither 500 pounds a year nor a room of her own to write in. She wrote at a lap desk in her family's sitting room and listened for the creaking door to alert her to hide what she was working on.

      Rather than some kind of amazing bit of, "let's free women" literature, I see this more as, “114 pages of excuses concerning why I can’t write today." A writer writes for herself, regardless of where that piece of writing ends up after she's completed it.

      Still, if one wants to make money off it nowadays, there are no excuses. I'm a homeschooling mother of nine and have made good money off my writing when I desired to. I have several friends who are doing the same.

      While I'm annoyed with modern young college women who read this and somehow feel they relate with Mary Beton/Seton/Carmichael, I feel like I want to read this once a year to try to be more relatable to women who do not have the opportunities that I and they do.

      Favorite quote: “It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”
    • 4/5
      Very interesting Never thought so thoroughly about this subject. But it is also very priveledged and until this day, many women cannot break the rut.
    • 4/5
      Highlights the challenges women writers faced...and continue to face, especially the need for money and space.
    • 5/5
      I first read this in college in the 80's, and it was transformational. Rereading many years later I remain impressed, but I will say it felt a good deal more current when I read it last. Everything here was groundbreaking when first published, even for women who had read Mary Wollstonecraft and other early feminists. Additionally, Woolf's keen eye, brilliant prose, and power of persuasion were and remain humbling. It is sad that her words still seemed very fresh in the 1080's and gratifying they are a bit less so now. In the past 30+ years society has changed more than we (or at least I) realize. Books like this one really bring that home. Still, even with women in a very different place than they were with respect to access to education and economically sustaining work much of it still resonates. Economic disparities between men and women are still profound, and they still limit women's opportunities to pursue things that are intellectually and spiritually satisfying.

      As the economic divide has narrowed, the inequality looks a bit different. Now the issue is less that one can write better with a roof and a full belly and more that life for most people living in two adult households (particularly with children) now requires two incomes and that those in one adult homes with children often just survive on one income. That means everyone needs to have cash-paying employment. Social norms still dictate that women with male partners also work the full time job of keeping house and raising children in addition to work outside the home, and of course single parents still do all of that. Women are exhausted. The NYT just did an excellent series about this focusing on how the pandemic made this unsustainable existence even worse. I read just yesterday that suicides in Japan among women in their childbearing years have skyrocketed in the pandemic year. No woman I know under the age of 50 has the time to meditate upon any urns. That is true even though my friends are largely people with professional and/or graduate degrees and have access to enough capital to meet their needs and have some help in the house on occasion. This means life is easier than it is for most women, and still we are maxed out. So Woolf's full belly part of the equation is showing improvement (though certainly many people are going hungry, at least here in the states, and the majority of the hungry are women and children.) But the full belly is only what was needed to get a room of one's own -- the purpose of that room was uninterrupted time to create, and most women have not come any closer to that meeting that need than they were 100 years ago.

      Of course economic autonomy is not the only subject addressed here. The fact that history is viewed through a white European male lens, a view of the past that inhibits women's present and future is also front and center. The truth of that observation is sadly little impacted by time and social change, though there has been some movement, particularly in the past 10 years or so. That fact also helps to explain why progress has been so maddeningly slow, and to illuminate the strength and talent of those women who were able to make any impact before recent change.

      All in all, Woolf's speech/manifesto stands the test of time. My hope is that for my grandchildren it will be a merely historical document. For now it a reminder of how we have moved forward and more importantly a kick in the ass to remind us that the core problem remains very much a part of most women's present. We all (feminists wherever we may fall on the gender spectrum) need to get out of the proverbial frog-being-boiled state of acceptance and into the real work of making sure that progress continues. Nearly 100 years and we still have a lot to do and Woolf's words inspire a lot of doing.
    • 4/5
      An unequivocal feminist text and so much more, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own sufficiently coalesces with her own fictional writing prowess. Using a character in the name of Mary "Any-Surname", Woolf tells of women's history, factual and sharp, and dissects this further through fictional Mary's personal history. This is further develop by Woolf's, through Mary, musings and sentiments regarding women's role in society, much more of what she needs in pursuing a career, a writing career in this instance, that she is passionate about. But achieving this is not without hurdles and struggles because women do not have the same rights and privileges as men. It is more than just about having a room of one's own with 500 pounds a year.

      Woolf is not preachy but passionately informative and does not stop here. She further reaches out and proposes not solutions but an "androgynous mind" which according to her is the best mind and for me should be the default ("In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female…The androgynous mind is resonant and porous… naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.") Luckily, human minds are powerful enough to develop and open up to such a mature way of thinking. I would like to believe. Moreover, how she examines classic female writers, their writing, and in this case a modern fictitious author, under the the patriarchal system is significantly thought-provoking. I only wonder why Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley (credited as the inventor of the sci-fi genre), are not included in this. Perhaps Woolf does not hold the sci-fi genre in high regard? Nonetheless, her hypothesis about an existence of a female Shakespeare (through Shakespeare's "sister" Judith who in reality is Shakespeare's daughter) would not be far from the truth if she were indeed alive. Remember when women, so-called "witches", were burned at the stake?

      For such a short book, A Room of One's Own never leaves any inequality unscrutinised. As old as some of these problems are, what with the progress of women's rights, there is still so much to do particularly about women of colour and inclusion of trans women. As a matter of fact what Woolf has iterated time and time in again that "The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself" is still relevant and observed today. A piercing book.
    • 5/5
      So happy to discover that Woolf, like Margaret Atwood, can give an essay the wonderful cadence and flow (and lively presentation) akin to a witty work of fiction! The title for this book comes from the premise of Woolf's thesis that “… a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Woolf proceeds to present a compelling argument, using author examples pulled from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Making use of the literary voice to communicate her arguments, Woolf alludes to three of the four Marys found in the 16th century Scottish ballad "The Fower Maries", with Mary Beton serving as the main narrator. While Woolf's focus is on women and fiction, she reaches some interesting conclusions, which I won't go into here. For me, I find the essay is most powerful in that it leads the reader (or at least this reader) to examine the arguments presented, arrive at one's own conclusion, possibly further research the topic in the context of the current literary landscape and keep the conversation going.
    • 5/5
      I've lost track of how many times I've read this one, but even though it hits me in different ways at different points in my life, I never stop loving Woolf's pointed, logical, funny, lyrical, and energetic jabs at a society where your gender (and, even she acknowledges, your class) can keep you from the freedom to express yourself in writing, and to get that writing read. I starred and underlined practically the whole book, so it is hard to pinpoint where I was most excited in this re-read. I do think, perhaps because I read The First Common Reader (a collection of Woolf's literary criticism) for the first time recently, that I appreciate Woolf's unique and precise insights as a reader way more than I ever did before. Her insights on the act of writing aren't bad either. This book is so short and fun to read and important in the worlds of literature and gender and feminism that, if you haven't read it yet, you should pick it up, and if it is one of your old favorites, maybe give it another spin and see how you feel.
    • 4/5
      El feminisme del 1929 explicat per Virgínia Woolf. Una cambra pròpia i una renda de 500 liiures anuals permetran a les dones ser autòmes i tenir llibertat per escriure i transmetre els seus sentiments, les seves experiències i els seus pensaments. Una cambra pròpia vol dir que disposarà de pany i clau per aïllar-se quan en tingui necessitat i no serà interrumpuda contínuament així podrà escriure i desenvolupar tot el seu potencial intel·lectual . Gairebé fa 100 anys d'aquesta conferència però és totalment vigent, encara no s'han aconseguit moltes de les coses que ella reclama per tant la lluita continua. A part de reivindicar la figura de la dona per eixamplar el camp de coneixements de la Humanitat, ens dona una lliçó magistral de literatura anglesa fent-nos anar a cercar els referents literaris que cita i que ens ajuden a emmarca els seus raonaments. També cal remarcar la visió unitària del ésser humà on es barregen la part masculina i femenina, vindicant homes femenins i dones masculines per guanyar-hi tots.
    • 5/5
      A fantastic essay- amazing (and perhaps a bit sad) that the words Woolf wrote about women in 1929 still resonate in 2015.
    • 1/5
      I'm only half way through, but thus far, sigh, it's so monotonous and she goes on and on repetitively about men. Alright already, we got it!
      I find it interesting that in just 54 pages she has already mentioned women suicide at least four times and I wonder if she had already been having issues with her illness at that time.
      She does a disservice to women; going mad and killing herself. For all her snooty snubbing about poor people being so inferior to the rich.
      So one must be a rich woman with a room of her own to be intelligent or be an artist of any kind? According to her writing, this is what can be surmised.
      What a long rant against men. . . and women in some parts. She comes off as a very miserable person.
      pg 108 "a poor child in England has little momre hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born." That is it. Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.
      Women , then, have not had a dog's chance of writig poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own.

      The limitation of her mind, of her thoughts.
    • 4/5
      extended essays about women in writing and feminism in general
    • 5/5
      This is the first book I've ever read where I am sad I didn't read it earlier in life. It is a feminist book without being militant, angry or bitter. In fact, Woolf delivers her feminism with a smile, wink and a great deal of wit. Her defense of women shouldn't offend men. In fact, I imagine most people would nod along with her. Except fans of Charlotte Bronte. But, because of Woolf's winking demeanor through the entire paper (it was originally a lecture to women at Girton, I believe?) I wonder if she was indeed skewering Bronte for losing her message due to Bronte's "anger" or if Woolf was skewering the critics (men) who said the same about Bronte? I'm not familiar enough with Bronte, her critics, fans or otherwise to say. (I don't remember anger or bitterness in Jane Eyre, but I haven't read it in a few years.) But, I do think Woolf has an excellent point: write without anger or bitterness and your message will come across better.

      I listened to the Juliet Stevenson narration of A Room of One's Own. I will listen to anything Juliet Stevenson performs. She is one of the best audiobook narrators out there, especially classics. However, I wish I had the physical book to read along. This book begs for underlining and multiple reads.
    • 5/5
      After a friend recommended it I found a copy and read it through in a day. It is really amazing and full of hard, crystallised truth, discursive and contemplative and philosophical and fervent. Wonderful stuff that had me jotting down extracts in my notebook over and over. I need to read more of her.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars. I enjoyed the overall tone of this book as well as Woolf's writing style (for the most part). There were some sections that were just a little too stream of consciousness for my taste. I had mixed feelings throughout though.
    • 3/5
      This is a book based on a couple of lectured given by Virgina Woolf. Published in 1928 it is an interesting read. She starts with her ideas as to why women are under represented in history and in literature. The surmise is, roughly, that men who have written are those that have had the money and space to be able to find the time to write. They are not being dragged from one job to the next in order to feed the family, therefore they have the time to be able to create. She uses a hypothetical sister of Shakespeare to make her point. How did Judith manage? Well she didn't get to go to the Grammar school, so her learning was whatever she managed to pick up from William's school books, and she was always being told to put that book down and do her chores. She, similarly, fled to London, but you can't put a woman on the stage, so she gets treated as a lady of small repute and ends up, knocked up, in an unmarked grave under the roundabout at Elephant & Castle.
      The surmise that in order to create you need to have the time and space to do so I can believe.
      What didn't chime with my way of thinking was that women & men are different, and that they would write differently as a result. A woman shouldn't try and write like a man, but should continue to write in a predominantly female manner. Woolf does suggest that each sex is a mixture of both manly & womanly characteristics and that both sexes should use both characteristics when writing. So a woman shouldn't try to write in a purely manly manner, but use elements of that style to augment the feminine. I have a spot of bother with that, as it assumes that men & women are chalk & cheese. I don't think they are. I prefer to consider that, by nature, there are differences, but they are in an overlapping continuum.
      There are things that remain relevant in this now, 90 years later, and in some ways it is god to see how things have moved (women are granted degrees and have had the vote, for almost a century, for instance). On the other hand, there seems to be any number of ways in which this was still contemporary. There remains much to do.
    • 3/5
      I felt the book covered as much about men as it did women. Woolf was such a widely read author that almost every page had me wanting to pick up another work mentioned. I am still wondering though could the room of one's own be oneself and the strength of character, pride and sense of self be the 500 pounds?
    • 5/5
      I have been questioning much in my life lately with particular guilt about how much I have let both myself and my sex and my children down, given the opportunities that I have had. I have parents who throughout my childhood have actively encouraged me to get a good education and who have nutured and supported me to achieve my best and I squandered it. I have worked in life and had some great jobs but right now I am completely dependant on my husband for a living - shame on me!!!! I am time rich - I have loads of time. Every day I am dripping in time and I waste it on Candy Crush Saga and yet I am so terrified that there is hardly any time left at all - what a travesty!!!!!

      I read A Room of One's Own in two sessions - I could not sleep after the first session as my mind was already racing.

      After completing the essay this evening I am compelled to write down my thoughts in this review.

      So firstly, Virginia Wolf got me thinking, her essay made me look at myself and my responsibility not only as a woman but as a human being.

      What I take from what she writes in her argument is that historically women have been denied opportunities such as education, freedom of movement etc and as a result they have in general been unable to achieve in the same way as men - eg academically or vocationally but in 1928 those opportunities are improving for women and so women can no longer hide in excuses so long as they are well off, which I believe is the second point she is making in so much as it doesn't matter whether you are male or female you still need to have money to write.

      I think it goes further and really it is also about respect. Not about men having respect for women but about us all having respect for ourselves as human beings and respect for each other. Let's stop blaming men and just embrace who we are men or women we all count. There will always be exceptions to any rule but basically at the end of the day it comes down to this. Stop making excuses and blaming others and just do it - whatever it is JUST DO IT because nowadays anything is possible by anyone. (so long as you have your freedom, have access to education and can afford to live )

      This is what I took from the essay on first reading - oh and there is something about lesbianism in it too.
    • 5/5
      Virginia Woolf essays speak the truth about Women and writing fiction. A true feminist.
    • 4/5
      Whenever someone talked about Virginia Woolf, they talked about this book, and how much they loved it. They recommended I start here, with A Room of One's Own, a collection of essays given at a speech at various universities.

      I was skeptical. Up until very recently, I didn't read a lot of non-fiction. But this isn't just a collection of essays - you get a sense not only of Woolf's writing, but of the woman herself.

      In this book she speculates that Shakespeare had a sister, and wonders how successful she might've been. (Not very, unless she had A Room of Her Own.)

      The reason I love this book is because Virginia Woolf takes all that is familiar to me as a former history major, (the sexism rife throughout literature) and picks it apart. She's vulnerable, she's frustrated, she's a little bit bitter, but her writing is beautiful.

      I'll leave you with one of the passages from the book that has stayed with me since I read it a few years ago.

      "A queer, composite being thus 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 the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.”
    • 5/5
      A short essay presented in book form, and yet one of the most powerful statements ever made in support of the freedom of women to follow their dreams. The way that Woolf structures and builds her essay, step by step from the foundation stones to the steeple-like point, should be a lesson to all aspiring writers.
    • 5/5
      Is it possible to imagine the reception of this book 86 years ago?
      Did it spark minds, light a fire, or at least prime them for further explosive thoughts?
      The era seems so very long ago, and yet what she writes remains true today. Women, 'gender', sex, power...much has changed yet much has not changed.
      It all seems quite self evident, yet it all still needs to be explained, again and again. Why is that?
      Very slowly though, there has been progress. More of us have our rooms and our five hundred pounds.
      And yesterday the majority of the Irish population said it was just fine with them if Chloe likes Olivia.
      I wonder how Ms Woolf would write this book in an update for today...
    • 5/5
      Made me really appreciate the things I take for granted, living in a modern, western country - the ability to own property, have a job, control my money and have a political voice and choices in my life: It pays to be reminded that it hasn't been that long since women had none of those things and we should never take them for granted.
    • 4/5
      I have read sections of this book, but I believe this it the first time that I have read it in its entirety. Here one sees the nascent women's studies movement ready to take flight, for better or for worst. Here, for better. Woolf's approach is light and, even at times humorous. She poses illuminating what ifs, such as what if Shakespeare had had a gifted sister? What would her fate have been? What if women had had money of their own? The book contains one of the very best attempts to define what makes a book a classic that I have come across. If the book has any faults, I would say that there is a tendency to be too precious and like-able. It seems a bit of a put on at times and a bit condescending. All in all a worthy and important look at women in literature by the early 20th century
    • 5/5
      There are so many great points in this book - the duality of mind, forced intellectual constriction, the patriarchy's effects on creativity, even just that you should write more - and no matter what you take from it, you have to admit it's well written.

      On a side note, "Material Girl" came on while I was reading this and it was really bizarre.
    • 4/5
      I feel full of feminist rage now.
    • 4/5
      Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own is an extended essay on the topic of women and fiction based on some lectures that Woolf gave at a couple of women's colleges in 1928. Of course, being a novelist, Woolf’s style of writing an essay varies a great deal from the typical one. To tackle this weighty subject, she invents a woman named Mary Beton and follows in Mary’s steps for a couple of days to make observations on the historical role of women in general, how women were treated in the modern day, and glances at the literature of both women and men. Woolf is characteristically imaginative and descriptive in her prose even as she describes essentially nonfiction topics.

      The main thesis of Woolf’s work is that women need the time, money, and space to become superior novelists (or writers of any sort, for that matter), and she implores women to acquire a private room of their own and a good 500 pounds a year in earnings to be able to become effective and noteworthy writers on par with their male counterparts. She also spends a great deal of time looking at past women in literature to note what contributions – whether positive or negative – these role models provide for the female writers of her day.

      This book is short enough that it could easily be read in a single day or sitting if one is dedicated (and has enough uninterrupted time), but it contains so many rich thoughts and musings that it provides plenty of fodder for contemplative reading and thinking. Even though some parts are dated, this book is still sadly relevant in many ways. For instance, consider the following quote:

      "Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are 'important': the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes 'trivial.' And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room."

      This is essential the same thing being said in the present day by authors like Jennifer Weiner. I definitely recommend reading this book for Woolf’s many poignant observations that cause the reader to stop and think about failings in our culture, especially when it comes to gender inequality, and about literature as a whole more critically. My feeble review is not really doing A Room of One's Own justice so I’m simply going to close it here with a quote containing one of Woolf’s later observations in the book.

      "All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are ‘sides,’ and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot. As people mature they cease to believe in sides or in Headmasters or in highly ornamental pots."
    • 5/5
      I just re-read this and I think it means more to me know that I am a father. No, I am not a father of a daughter yet. When I recently read the Autobiography of Malcolm X I thought it would be essential for me to encourage my newborn son, in years to come, to read. I have a bit of a pile- Walden Pond, Plutarch, H Rider Haggard, Malcolm X, and now I think this is absolutely essential to make sure my masculine little boy understands.

      Something I want to highlight- "Literature is open to everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind," p. 75-76. Instead of making her feel inferior, instead of spending all of your energies pushing her down why not, dear son, spend the time and energy lifting her up? Then you can work together, then your work will be so much better.

      In fact I think this might be good for a men's group. I was at a party once with some of our couple friends. We played that game, "Battle of the sexes" (I find it trite and stupid). They were so impressed with me that I knew what the reference "A room of one's own" referred to. It made me sad, this book should be common knowledge. To BOTH men and women.

      Come on, people, let's stop being stupid.

    Book preview

    A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf

    A Room of One's Own

    Virginia Woolf

    One

    But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it 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; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions—women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon 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 opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here—how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; ‘I’ is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it.

    Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.

    But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind—put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding.

    What idea it had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing I could not now remember. The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning. Strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed smoothed away; the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no sound could penetrate, and the mind, freed from any contact with facts (unless one trespassed on the turf again), was at liberty to settle down upon whatever meditation was in harmony with the moment. As chance would have it, some stray memory of some old essay about revisiting Oxbridge in the long vacation brought Charles Lamb to mind—Saint Charles, said Thackeray, putting a letter of Lamb’s to his forehead. Indeed, among all the dead (I give you my thoughts as they came to me), Lamb is one of the most congenial; one to whom one would have liked to say, Tell me then how you wrote your essays? For his essays are superior even to Max Beerbohm’s, I thought, with all their perfection, because of that wild flash of imagination, that lightning crack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed and imperfect, but starred with poetry. Lamb then came to Oxbridge perhaps a hundred years ago. Certainly he wrote an essay—the name escapes me—about the manuscript of one of Milton’s poems which he saw here. It was Lycidas perhaps, and Lamb wrote how it shocked him to think it possible that any word in Lycidas could have been different from what it is. To think of Milton changing the words in that poem seemed to him a sort of sacrilege. This led me to remember what I could of Lycidas and to amuse myself with guessing which word it could have been that Milton had altered, and why. It then occurred to me that the very manuscript itself which Lamb had looked at was only a few hundred yards away, so that one could follow Lamb’s footsteps across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure is kept. Moreover, I recollected, as I put this plan into execution, it is in this famous library that the manuscript of Thackeray’s Esmond is also preserved. The critics often say that Esmond is Thackeray’s most perfect novel. But the affectation of the style, with its imitation of the eighteenth century, hampers one, so far as I can remember; unless indeed the eighteenth-century style was natural to Thackeray—a fact that one might prove by looking at the manuscript and seeing whether the alterations were for the benefit of the style or of the sense. But then one would have to decide what is style and what is meaning, a question which—but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.

    That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I descended the steps in anger. Still an hour remained before luncheon, and what was one to do? Stroll on the meadows? sit by the river? Certainly it was a lovely autumn morning; the leaves were fluttering red to the ground; there was no great hardship in doing either. But the sound of music reached my ear. Some service or celebration was going forward. The organ complained magnificently as I passed the chapel door. Even the sorrow of Christianity sounded in that serene air more like the recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself; even

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