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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
"La liberté intellectuelle dépend des choses matérielles. La poésie dépend de la liberté intellectuelle. Et les femmes ont toujours été pauvres, et cela non seulement depuis deux cents ans, mais depuis le commencement des temps. [...] Les femmes n'ont donc pas eu la moindre chance de pouvoir écrire des poèmes."
c'est la toute première fois que je lis du Virginia Woolf. j'ai découvert un essai frappant, éloquent et crucial lorsque l'on s'intéresse un tant soit peu au féminisme. l'autrice nous offre une belle réflexion sur la place des femmes en littérature, elle lie cela à des questions de classe, le tout avec une petite touche d'humour que j'ai personnellement beaucoup appréciée !
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
"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."
Woah woah woah, am I a feminist now?
I know—crazy to think that if women had the same opportunities as men, they might have been capable of producing similar works of genius.
I know—crazy to think that if women had the same opportunities as men, they might have been capable of producing similar works of genius.
I picked this up randomly, but I ended up finding it really enjoyable. It’s a fascinating read. I would’ve loved to hear the original lectures in person—how groundbreaking they must have felt at the time. It was eye-opening to get a glimpse into that history and the logic behind Woolf’s arguments.
I especially enjoyed her commentary on Austen—it gave me a deeper appreciation for those works, too. And I liked that Woolf didn’t frame it as an attack on men, but as a reasoned call for equality, independence, and creative space.
Honestly, if someone disagrees with her core argument, there’s probably something wrong.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Favourite Quotes ~
"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."
"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."
"The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself."
"who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?"
"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."
A fascinating look at why and how women have been disadvantaged in the arts throughout history. Woolf argues that for a woman to be able to write or create art she would need money (500 pounds a year in 1928) and a room of her own that she could lock. Throughout history women were too poor and lacked the free time to create art because of the patriarchy. She imagined that if Shakespeare had a sister, equally gifted, the sister would have no possibility of pursuing a career like Shakespeare's. Women were not allowed to act in Elizabethan times and if she were to go to London, she would probably be raped and die in poverty. At the time of writing (1928), women were finally getting more freedoms, they were allowed to vote in the UK, there had been universities open to women scholars since 1866 and the professions were finally opening up to allow women in. She also argues to create great art, women need to build on those who went before, she looks at the great woman pioneers of the English novel in the 18th century like Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot. The book is taken from a couple of speeches she made to two women's colleges to encourage the women scholars to go and write not just novels but all kinds of writing.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
I’ve got nothing smart to say about this book. This was my first time reading Virginia Woolf and I loooved her style. Though I had trouble understanding what was going on all the time and if I was in a noisy room then I had no chance. I was surprised this was written in 1929 tho. Like I just read Of Human Bondage earlier this year and that seemed like a book written a hundred years ago. But Woolf’s style of writing was so quippy and fun. Even with the kinda formal english way of speaking, it seemed much more recent to me. In my head she looks like Isabelle Huppert wearing capris.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced