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Virginia Woolf

Jenifer Smith

A Room Of One's Own Kindle Edition

by Virginia Woolf (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Why is it that men, and not women, have always had power, wealth, and fame? Woolf cites the two keys to freedom: fixed income and one’s own room. Foreword by Mary Gordon.

Print length

122 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Mariner Books
Publication date

December 27, 1989
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14 years and up
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4774 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 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 mantel-piece 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 wastepaper 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.

Copyright 1929 by Harcourt, Inc.
Copyright renewed 1957 by Leonard Woolf
Annotated Edition copyright © 2005 by Harcourt, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 2005 by Susan Gubar

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be
mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,
6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Book Description

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14-18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

Probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in this century -- Hermione Lee * Financial Times * --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

Essay by Virginia Woolf, published in 1929. The work was based on two lectures given by the author in 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, Cambridge. Woolf addressed the status of women, and women artists in particular, in this famous essay which asserts that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write. Woolf celebrates the work of women writers, including Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontes. In the final section Woolf suggests that great minds are androgynous. She argues that intellectual freedom requires financial freedom, and she entreats her audience to write not only fiction but poetry, criticism, and scholarly works as well. The essay, written in lively, graceful prose, displays the same impressive descriptive powers evident in Woolf's novels and reflects her compelling conversational style. (The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature ) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

Widely acknowledged as a pioneering text of the women’s movement, A Room of One’s Own is one of Virginia Woolf’s most influential works. Couched in entertaining fiction, this book-length essay investigates both the patriarchal realities of the present day, and history of discrimination against women and the stifling effect of such prejudice on women’s creativity. The prescient concluding words of the dust jacket of the first British edition (which in all probability were written by the author herself) state that: “an attempt is made ... to forecast what effect comparative freedom and independence will have upon women’s artistic work in the future.”

The first comprehensive and authoritative edition of this foundational text of the feminist movement, and one of the most significant works in her own canon, this timely and important new edition of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own adopts the complete text of the first British edition published in London on October 24, 1929. Additional features include a comprehensive introduction detailing the process and composition of Woolf’s original essay and the evolution of its subsequent publication history. Extensive explanatory notes add further illumination by revealing the essay’s broader political, historical, social, and literary contexts. A comprehensive appendix also highlights variations between each of the British editions that appeared in Woolf’s lifetime and the first American edition, alterations made in the first British edition from Woolf’s uncorrected proofs, and current editorial emendations incorporated in this new edition. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

Another in Penguin's Virginia Woolf series featuring Atkins. This 1929 essay is perhaps the author's most important work--part feminist manifesto, part literary theory and part personal reflection presaging her suicide. However intriguing on the page, a treatise of this length can easily bore a listener. But Atkins, celebrated for her one-woman play based on this work, never allows the complexity of Woolf's ideas to get the better of her. Instead, she uses the superb writing and rich intellectual capital to best advantage. If she errs, it's in giving the narrative personality greater maturity than is warranted. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

"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." So begins what is widely regarded as the foundation text of feminist literary criticism, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Probably Woolf's most readable and entertaining book, it was based on papers delivered at Newnham and Girton Colleges―the two women's colleges at Cambridge University. Never losing sight of her undergraduate audience, Woolf provides a brief history of women's writing in English, a scathing account of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which women have been discouraged from writing, and a recommendation for how to change matters: "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." In the process, Woolf takes on women's economic disadvantages, the underfunding of women's education, the discouragement of women from certain kinds of (lucrative) work, the ways in which women are socialized into suspicion of each other, and how women participate in their own systemic oppression. Yet, in spite of these weighty subjects, A Room of One's Own remains throughout funny, light-hearted, engaging for the novice reader while still offering "nuggets" to the worldy-wise. It is, above and beyond all else, a very model of essay writing. This Broadview edition provides a reliable text at a very reasonable price. It contains textual notes but no appendices or introduction. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Publisher

5 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Book Description

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study in English-speaking classrooms. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Born in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen. She suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her step-sister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. She was drawn into the company of writers and artists such as Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, later known as the Bloomsbury Group. Among them she met Leonard Woolf, whom she married in 1912, and together they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, appeared in 1915, and her major novels include Mrs Dalloway (1925), the historical fantasy Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), and Between the Acts (1941). Woolf lived an energetic life, reviewing and writing and dividing her time between London and the Sussex Downs. In 1941, fearing another attack of mental illness, she drowned herself. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Amazon.com Review

Surprisingly, this long essay about society and art and sexism is one of Woolf's most accessible works. Woolf, a major modernist writer and critic, takes us on an erudite yet conversational--and completely entertaining--walk around the history of women in writing, smoothly comparing the architecture of sentences by the likes of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, all the while lampooning the chauvinistic state of university education in the England of her day. When she concluded that to achieve their full greatness as writers women will need a solid income and a privacy, Woolf pretty much invented modern feminist criticism. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004H1U1YI
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; First edition (December 27, 1989)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 27, 1989
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4774 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 122 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ B08KQ5SHPF
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #39,021 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #10 in Women Author Literary Criticism
- #10 in Women Writers
- #13 in Feminist Theory (Kindle Store)

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Virginia Woolf
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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.
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Jenifer Smith
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A Classic with a Possibly Mixed Legacy

Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2018

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A Room of One’s Own is of course canonical and hardly needs another recommendation. The almost flippant tone with which Wolff skewers male artistic superiority with arguments while simultaneously refuting the same idea with a style itself ingenious etches in one’s soul the plight of women in the early twentieth century.

And, of course, the book is almost a victim of its own success. Few women in Western countries are now dissuaded from having an artistic career. The women’s movement has, so to speak, moved on to demands like equal pay.

So I’ll merely point out one perspective which may have been overlooked by some readers. That is, that Woolf’s cause is completely centered around the problems of first world women. Basically, Woolf argues that women do not have the access to the wealth or education that men have and, as a result, have not produced an artistic genius like Shakespeare. Fair enough. But how many women in the period following the First World War were concerned about having an outlet for their creativity? Were not women in many parts of the world so bereft of even their natural human rights so as not to over worry about outlets for creativity?

For all its indisputable genius, A Room of One’s Own then may arguably be charged with a mixed legacy. Yes, it highlighted the need for privileged women to be equals of men in their access to the fonts of creativity. But it also may have tended to direct feminism to a first world perspective leaving out the voices of billions of women who Woolf, for all her literary aplomb, does not seem overly concerned about, at least in this work.

Literary classic? Undoubtedly. Mixed effect on the direction of twentieth century feminism? A distinct possibility.

26 people found this helpful

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Suko

Still Relevant and Important

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2008

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One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf's very intense A Room Of One's Own, is actually a long essay she wrote "with ardour and conviction" on the the topic of women and fiction, that she prepared when asked to speak about this subject at women's colleges. A Room of One's Own was published in 1929, when young women were still discouraged from attending college (due to genuine fear that a good education would make women unfit for marriage and motherhood), and although it's not angry in tone the essay reflects a society in which severe limitations were put on women and their achievements. Virginia Woolf speaks about the creative process that lead to her talks, of her notebook in which she recorded a multitude of ideas, thoughts, and mental meanderings, and writes about the train of thought that led to her conclusion, that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf grapples with what is exactly meant by women and fiction (not a simple matter), and demonstrates and expresses the complexity of her thought in her trademark stream-of-consciousness writing. Defying conventions of the time, she talks about the actual food served at the luncheon party, of the soles and partridges and potatoes, and of the importance of food to the artist in a more general sense. She discusses numerous things in this full, layered essay of her thoughts, among them a sense of loss due to the war which began in August of 1914, that changed the underlying current of life--previously filled with music and poetry, with romance--and of the special difficulties women artists face (still relevant today!). Her message is simple (though the means is not), that women must have money (a fixed income) and a room of their own (privacy) in order to have the freedom to create, luxuries that men may take for granted. She imagines Shakespeare's "sister", equal in talent and genius, but because of her sex, never writes a word, never expresses her genius, never lives to old age because she takes her own life in quiet desperation. Her essay is meant to encourage young women, to inspire them to create, as she's sympathetic to their plight. In A Room of One's Own,Virginia Woolf wants the limitations removed, and for women to have the same intellectual freedom that men have had for centuries, so that they, too, may express their genius.

(This is a passage slightly modified from my blog about books, Suko's Notebook, suko95.blogspot.com, which I invite you to visit.)

4 people found this helpful

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Kyle D

I Never met a Book that made me a Worse Person

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2022

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And this makes me a better one. Ideas that are still relevant today. Prose that once you get into the flow of things is very snappy and dry that can lead to the sort of humor that makes satire funny. Let me be clear this is not satire but it has that intelligence and edge where you’d think it is, but pitifully it’s not this is real life.

It’s a great challenging read. Fantastic.

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2017

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An essay written in the late 1920s about women's writing. Why wasn't Shakespeare a woman? Why did Jane Austen hide her manuscripts from guests? What makes good writing? What makes women's writing? Are a woman's sentences different from a man's sentences?

This book is witty, from the first moment when the author tries to cross the lawn of an Oxbridge college and is stopped by a beadle because only the fellows and scholars (all male) are allowed here. Later she notes wryly that the few women's colleges have no such beadle, and none of the endowments of the men's colleges.

What a woman needs in order to write is a room of one's own and five hundred pounds a year.

When she wrote, women had only had the vote in Britain for less than a decade, and married women had only been allowed to own their own property for a bare forty years. Women's education is no longer the issue it was when the book was written and it is much easier today for a woman to be independent. Still, A Room of One's Own remains an entertaining read and the issues it raises are by no means resolved.

36 people found this helpful

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Aly

Not A Room Of One’s Own inside !

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2019

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The cover was A Room of Ones Own, but inside a different book!!! So annoying ! Inside was a religious essay by Howard Thurman called Disciplines of the Spirits! This is the worst return ever. Do not buy the Room of Ones Own with a picture of Virginia Woolf looking down with her hair in a low bun. It’s a different book inside and trust me it’s a boring religious propaganda book.

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Suzanne M. Wheat

Struck Me Personally

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2020

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A room of ones own plus 500 pounds a year. The money should have been the title. Starving in one's room is not ideal for creativity.

2 people found this helpful

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Monterrey girl

Brilliant, intellectual, stimulating, empowering yet humbling.

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2022

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It was a hard read. I had to stop every twenty minutes and think about what she was trying to convey. I absolutely would recommend this book to any woman, feminist or no.

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Top reviews from other countries

MegaReader

A recommended read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2019

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Rejection is not new, as John Keats, had he lived today, could verify. Stung by harsh criticism of his work during his short lifetime of only 25 years, the following words (not even his name) are etched on his tombstone in Rome's Protestant cemetery:
'This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who on his deathbed in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraven on his tombstone: Here lies one whose name was writ in water. February 24th 1821.'
I only discovered this whilst reading Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own', which are essays containing the speeches she gave to students at Girton College, Cambridge in the 1920s. The main subject matter of these essays is Women and Fiction, but as you can see she does deviate somewhat...
Virginia Woolf stated that for a woman to be able to write fiction, she must have a room of her own and £500 per year, which of course was a lot of money in her time. Her aunt had left her this selfsame legacy and she had a room of her own, but she bewailed the fate of females from a lesser social class. These women were poor and controlled by men, reduced to being mere servants and childminders and had no time whatsoever to themselves and no chance of ever writing a poem, let alone a novel.
The middle classes fared rather better, although Jane Austen had no room of her own and had to hide the manuscript of Pride and Prejudice under a blotter for fear of being ridiculed. Charlotte Bronte complained of having to mend stockings when she wanted to travel all over the world. Female authors such as these met much criticism in their lifetimes and the Bronte sisters even had to publish their work using male pseudonyms to have their writing taken seriously.
Noblewomen had the time and money to write poetry, but even Lady Winchilsea was not happy writing poetry, controlled by men stopping her from doing what she wanted to do, and knowing she would be laughed at and satirised as a 'blue-stocking' if her poetry came to light. Noblewomen were expected just to write letters, not novels.
The essays are quite fascinating, and the book, a classic, was actually free on Amazon. The lives of women have improved now to the extent where many female authors do have their writing taken seriously, but still many are passed off as lightweight for writing about what they know... family sagas, relationships and romance.
I would agree with Ms Woolf that women do need a good income and a space for them to write in peace, ideally without domestic interruptions. Wordsworth was notorious for entering his house by the back door to avoid 'domestic issues'. Quite often these days women, like myself, earn an income by working and writing novels in their spare time. However, women today will write whatever their circumstances if the urge takes them. Yes, many might be rejected by agents and publishers, but at least they have the strength of mind to carry on regardless.
Did a room of her own and an income of £500 per year make Virginia Woolf happy? No it didn't; she drowned herself in 1941 after suffering another bout of mental illness. However, she left a wonderful body of work that will be read for decades to come. Do have a read of her Girton essays if you have some peace in a room of your own! A recommended 5 star read.

9 people found this helpful

Marie Andrews (Lots Of Livres)

I really enjoyed reading this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 3, 2017

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I really enjoyed reading this! I found it a very interesting and intriguing read, especially from the viewpoint of nearly 100 years later on the attitudes and predictions of the future. Virginia Woolf argues that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (hence the title of this essay), and it is split into six chapters, progressing towards her overall viewpoint. A highly recommended read! Some of my favourite/interesting quotes...
- "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"
- "Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
- "There is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind"
- "It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex"
- "Women have always been poor, not for 200 years, but from the beginning of time"

15 people found this helpful

mansi mudgal

one of the greatest works on feminism is born

Reviewed in India on March 26, 2018

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"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?"
EVERYTHING, it has EVERYTHING to do with it!
This book is based on a series of lectures she gave to women at Cambridge University on Women and Fiction.
Throughout the essay she ponders on the fact that men historically have produced more works of art than women, "Why is that?" she thinks and so, one of the greatest works on feminism is born!
Woolf wonders how much greater the works of Jane Austen or The Brontë Sisters might have been if they had owned a room of their own, a desk where to write in privacy or had they been granted with unleashed freedom to devote to the creative process.
She thinks about the fate of the sister Shakespeare never had, what if this fictitious sister was brilliant? As good if not more than the bard? The lost sister who people would have laughed at, questioned, disowned, exploited had she written plays, shown some talent and tried to break free.
A Room of One's Own is beautiful, piercing and vital, something I'd suggest everyone to read.

55 people found this helpful

Sleipnir

I should have read this years ago

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 28, 2020

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I don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading this book; I should have read it years ago. Woolf examines the dearth of famous women in the field of literature – this was written in 1928 – and explains why cultural and socioeconomic factors are the primary cause, illustrated by the reality, or lack thereof, of having both a room of one's own in which to be able to work undisturbed plus the financial security that enables one to focus on the work rather than having to contend with the endless sea of tribulations that are, for most women, a part of everyday life.

4 people found this helpful

Damaskcat

Witty and Wise

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2011

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Virginia Woolf was asked to give a talk about Women and Fiction in 1928. The talk eventually became this book. Woolf shows very convincingly how women have found it difficult to be taken seriously in the world of literature. Her famous suggestion that women can only play a full part in writing if they have an income of five hundred year and a room of their own - with a lock on the door still holds good today though the amount of money needed would be larger. She provides some examples of how women's talents were just not taken seriously and they were regarded as totally inferior to even the most mediocre man.

I found it interesting that she thought the best writing is androgynous and could have been written by either men or women. She accepts that women may write differently from men because they are aware of different aspects of life because of the way society is organised. Jane Austen wrote about what she knew as did George Eliot. They are disparaged because they deal with everyday life whereas men write about the outside world because that is what they know. Could Tolstoy have written `War and Peace' if he had been female? Woolf thinks not.

Woolf's overall thesis is that the world of literature needs both masculine qualities and feminine qualities. She does not want to downgrade the achievements of men because she believes the world needs both. The example of Shakespeare's sister is a telling one even though Shakespeare's writing is androgynous. Writers need to use both sides of their brains and personalities which echoes Jung's ideas that men have a feminine side just as women have a masculine side - wholeness comes from using both sides.

This book is well worth reading for its writing style alone and for its humour. This is not a feminist tract by any means but it does make some very valid points about how women were still treated in the nineteen twenties even though they had the right to vote.

4 people found this helpful

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