A Room of One's Own
Write essay on "A Room of One's Own" and answer the following: What predictions does Virginia Woolf make for women's writing in the future? How do they look from our current vantage point? If Woolf were to time travel to our time, what would she think of women writers?
A room of one's own, by 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 Brontes 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....
“A Room of One's Ownâ€
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Abstract
The title of the essay by Virginia Woolf is A Room of One's Own. It was published in 1929, and it is based on a series of lectures that Virginia Woolf delivered at Girton College and Newham College at Cambridge University. This essay will revisit her themes, which include the importance of money, subjectivity of truth, gender inequality, and interruptions and how they reflect the state of women writers in her era. In addition, the essay will have a closer analysis at the challenges that women in her era faced and their applicability in today's world with respect to female writers of this present age.
Virginia Woolf begins by pointing out that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. According to her, women and fiction remain unsolved problems because of the financial deprivation of women in the society in her time. In her opinion, women must have financial freedom and “a room of one's ownâ€, means the need for privacy, silence, and personal liberty to creativity in order for them to become great writers. She tries to examine the capability of women to produce great works such as those of William Shakespeare as she addresses the limitation that those women would face. She explores and gives an account of different women writers and draws inspiration from the likes of Jane Ellen Harrison. With these limitations, she claims that women need income and space of their own to be able to establish themselves as great writes. Some would call this being materialistic, but this can be viewed as the necessary conditions to further creativity of women in the society of that era. According to Woolf, the conditions must prevail for women to write fiction. The metaphor “room†can be used not only to signify a space, but liberty to advance creativity. In today's world, this can refer to access to technology, and opportunities to advance creativity. It also symbolizes the liberty of women to be and write whatever they wish.
The narrator is the major character and refers to herself as “I†although she assumes different names at various points throughout the narration; “call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, or any other name you please.†This makes the audience to consider carefully who she is at the various points of the narration. Throughout the text she tries to explain how she concluded her thesis, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.†In an era where Education of women was unheard of, and the community only believed in education of boys, Virginia Woolf tries to show the importance of education of women. She investigates the opportunities available to men and women in a hypothesized college, “Oxbridge College†and concludes that women are underprivileged. Therefore, the other factor Woolf considers as important for a woman to write is to have a good education that will form the base for their writing.
One of her fiction characters is Judith Shakespeare, sister to William Shakespeare. Judith had the same capabilities and creativity as her brother William. This character is created to show the fate of highly intelligent women in that society. The writer tries to show that since the doors of education were closed to women, Judith will not be able to have the opportunity to develop her creativity just like her brother William. Just like the writer herself, Judith was denied the opportunity to go to school, and she was left trapped at home: "She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school."
Virginia Woolf clearly brings out the situation between both William and Judith. While William is sent off to school to further his creativity and exposed to the world of imagination and possibilities, Judith is burdened with house chores and any attempt to pick up a book is seen as neglecting the household chores. Judith is forced to get married, and all her dreams seem to disappear further away. She brings out her first theme of inequality as one of the reasons why women writers do not produce impressive works of writing compared to their male counterpart. This does not mean that women should be given the opportunities that belong to men, but it shows that the creativity that women possess if given the opportunity to mature. If natured, the talents that women possess would not be left to waste, like Judith's talent in the essay. Virginia tries to show that a female Shak...