A Room of One's Own
by Virginia Woolf
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Book Summary Information
Author: Virginia WoolfEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1989-12-27
ISBN: 0156787334
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: Mariner Books
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780156787338
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of A Room of One's Own
Book Review: "... let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn."
Summary: 5 Stars
"A Room of One's Own," published in 1929, is an expanded essay combining two papers which author Virginia Woolf presented in 1928 at Newnham and Girton Colleges, the only women's colleges at Cambridge at that time. In this dissertation on women and literature, she discusses the various obstacles facing women involved in the creative process, and stresses the importance of financial and social independence for females. I think this is probably my favorite essay by the author, and one of her finest, most accessible pieces of writing. It is important to note that her interests did not lie particularly in the areas of politics and feminism, but solely on art itself and the freedom to create it.
Ms. Woolf argues that the reason there were so few prominent, highly respected women authors before the twentieth century is because most women had not led lives conducive to creating great art or literature. She posits that there was no actual body of notable women's literature because, in the past, women did not have the education, the income, the privacy, the experiences of travel to broaden their world, or the time to write. Dominated by men throughout history, females have been denied access to education, independent travel, and to publication. Without an independent income, women are totally dependent upon men.
Women are responsible for bearing children, and in almost all cases have the primary responsibility for bringing them up. Few have the luxury of hired help. Although rewarding in many way, child rearing allows for little privacy, independence and solitude, prerequisite conditions for writing, painting or composing. If privacy is non-existent, interruptions block creativity. Ms. Woolf clearly states that what a woman needs is a room of her own and a guaranteed fixed income in order to write noteworthy fiction. Here she challenges women to become economically self-sufficient in order to acquire the necessary intellectual freedom to create outstanding literature. Virginia Woolf believed that the remarkable, the momentous, could be found amongst the mundane details and occurrences of everyday life. She encourages women to write about all of the "minutely obscure lives" which men have ignored, and about themselves, their feelings and their reactions to the world around them. I believe the author's great novel, "Mrs Dalloway" reflects this mindset.
Aphra Behn, (1640 - 1689), was the first female writer to earn her own income from writing. After John Dryden, she was the most prolific dramatist of the Restoration. However, she achieved her place in literary history for her pioneering work in prose narrative. Ms. Behn paved the way for 19th century novelists like Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Bronte sisters, who were able to write in their family sitting-rooms or libraries, despite their lack of independence and privacy. Woolf wrote/spoke: "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she - shady and amorous as she was - who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits."
Ms. Woolf quotes Sir Arthur Quiller-Coach, a Professor of Literature who wrote: "The poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog's chance...a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born." Ms Woolf goes on to state that obviously this noted professor believes that intellectual freedom depends upon material things. "Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own."
A good part of "A Room of One's Own" analyzes the patriarchal British society that so limited a woman's opportunities. Woolf theorized that while male authors write about women and allow their heroines to "shine like beacons" in fiction, in reality women were often treated like slaves, not free to choose their own mates, and frequently beaten by their husbands and fathers. She goes on to say that men historically belittle women as a means of asserting their own superiority. She uses the metaphor of a looking-glass relationship, men, threatened by the thought of losing their power, need to reduce women to enlarge themselves.
The androgynous ideal, the writer with an androgynous mind, where a writer uses both parts of the brain equally, is also championed here. "The androgynous mind is resonant and porous; it transmits emotion without impediment; it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided." This is a fascinating proposition which Woolf explored more fully in her 1928 novel "Orlando," a fantasy set in the Elizabethan court, tracing the career of the androgynous protagonist from a masculine identity to a feminine identity.
Woolf constructed this essay as a partly-fictionalized narrative to make her points vividly. She invents an imaginary female narrator, a talented contemporary novelist of some potential. Unfortunately, because she lacks models and a tradition to draw on, our narrator is a hundred years away from being able to develop her gifts fully, to "be a poet." A fictional historic character is introduced, Miss Judith Shakespeare, the very gifted sibling of Will, in order to illustrate the sorry fate of highly intelligent, creative women in the past. This device is extremely effective in bringing home the difficulties of talented women living in the traditional world.
I highly recommend this extraordinary long essay to both men and women - to everyone interested in the creative process. It is a brilliantly written, perceptive thesis.
JANA
Summary of A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf's landmark inquiry into women's role in society
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister?a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, she takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one: women must have a fixed income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create.
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.
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