A Room of One's Own
Let’s talk about the big, bad Virginia Woolf. Woolf graced the world with her presence in 1882 and graced the literary community with her first published work in 1990. She couldn’t vote, but she could certainly write. Much of her work touts the *radical* notion that women can do things well. The catch? Women’s limited resources inhibit their intellectual potential.
In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Woolf, 6). The extended essay comes from lectures she gave to women’s colleges in 1928. It explores the conditions required to produce creative work and emphasizes the necessity of literal space and privacy, which women simply did not have at the time. She invents the fictional sister of Shakespeare—Judith. Judith might have the same skills and ambitions as her sibling, but because she has meals to cook, children to raise, and shelves to dust, she is forced to squash her imaginative spirit while William whips out sonnets on the regular.
Of course, the gender dynamics of the sixteenth century differ from that of her own generation. In the early 1900s, there were some—though, not many—female writers. But even then, a woman had a pickaxe in her hand instead of a pen (Woolf, 80). Her writing served as a therapeutic exercise in which to (rightfully) bitch about her inferior position in society. She wasn’t creating art unperturbed; she was constantly grinding against a strong patriarchal current that laughed at her attempts. To highlight the prevailing sexist mentality, Woolf smugly quotes a contemporaneous male preacher, who said, “‘A woman’s composing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all’” (Woolf, 56). Actually, sir, there are some that do it quite well:
I find Woolf’s perspective particularly interesting because she has her own room and she has money—her aunt died and left her the big bucks. These opportunities provide her clarity of mind in such a drastic way that she can’t deny their importance. It’s nice when someone gets ahead in life and doesn’t forget about the little people. Overall, I think that Woolf is excellent. She says things like, “We burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex” and she lights a fire in my soul that’s grounded in tangible frustration (Woolf, 22).
Her brilliance is timeless because she attacks the root of the problem: people who are at a disadvantage culturally and financially have physical and spiritual barriers that prevent them from entering a mental space that allows for pure creativity. Because this situation disproportionately affects women, where does that leave us? Her lectures culminate in an inspirational urge to move forward. She encourages listeners to write despite circumstance, but also strive to speak out against those circumstances and thereby incite social progress.
The essay is relatively short (my copy is 112 pages). I think that it should be mandatory reading in high school. Woolf knows how to slip humor into her writing, and I respect any author who can simultaneously speak about a serious subject with deference and surprise us with lightheartedness. A Room of One’s Own earns 4 out of 5 flames. I’m docking her one hump because I don’t agree with everything she says. I think that Woolf wrote what she wrote with an enlightened perspective of her time. That perspective can help us today as a launchpad, but I think that it’s imprudent to view it as the end-all-be-all feminist doctrine.
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