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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book gave an insight to the struggles women have faced before us and how much creativity we have lost due to one sex being deemed more superior to the other. It was thoughtful and witty, reflecting on themes in a personal way which were symbolic of the time but can still resonate with all women today.
funny
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
Muy bien, pero quería que acabase pronto, no estaba en el momento de esta lectura quizá.
“Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
What is it that a woman requires? According to Virginia Woolf, it’s a room of her own and five hundred a year. While the room might seem like a physical space, it is also metaphorically a space in which she can voice her opinions. The essay follows a linear structure, beginning with meals at two different Oxbridge colleges, which essentially shape the narrator’s thought process. The differing experiences gleaned from these two meals highlight outbursts of class and gender disparity. Amenities were never afforded to women, as they could only focus on the essentials in a women’s college due to economic disparity.
Her body wanders along with the reader’s mind as she moves through places like the British Museum. She discusses literature, pointing out how, in earlier times, men freely wrote about women—even though no formal education was required for them to comment on women’s lives—while women’s own writings were sparse. Woolf’s radical approach has propelled A Room of One’s Own to become one of the founding texts of feminist criticism. However, it lacks the key aspects that later waves of feminism, especially the third wave, have struggled to bring to the forefront: intersectionality and embracing collectivity.
Her words—“But, nevertheless, she had certain advantages which women of far greater gift lacked even half a century ago. Men were no longer to her ‘the opposing faction’; she need not waste her time railing against them; she need not climb onto the roof and ruin her peace of mind longing for travel, experience and a knowledge of the world and character that were denied her”—exemplify how she celebrates the moment when women no longer feel that men are “the opposing faction.” Yet, as a woman—especially, a woman of colour—in the 21st century, where news articles are still filled with threats of domestic violence, femicide, transphobia, and acid attacks over the simplest matters, Woolf’s dissuasion of rallying against men feels both privileged and complicit in a world still plagued by the effects of patriarchy.
When she grows angry at a professor for wrongly disparaging a woman’s voice in the British Museum, that anger remains central to her critique of women’s limitations. Yet, contrastingly, her urge to condescendingly discipline women for their approach to feminism feels white-washed. Claiming feminism’s fight is over—when only a fraction of women worldwide have achieved basic equality—is a mischaracterisation of what feminism truly stands for.
Despite my differences with Woolf’s feminist theory—often fueled by differences in race and era—she undeniably created rooms and spaces for women. Her essays and novels opened doors for many. In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf doesn’t just talk about women and literature—she questions the entire way we think about women in history and scholarship. Instead of relying on cold, logical arguments, she uses imagination and storytelling to fill in the silences history has left about women. She believes that true art should burn away the personal and reflect something more intense and universal—a kind of emotional clarity she calls "incandescence." Her essay becomes a kind of performance, not just arguing for women’s voices in literature, but showing what that voice can look like when it’s free, creative, and fiercely intelligent.
Her body wanders along with the reader’s mind as she moves through places like the British Museum. She discusses literature, pointing out how, in earlier times, men freely wrote about women—even though no formal education was required for them to comment on women’s lives—while women’s own writings were sparse. Woolf’s radical approach has propelled A Room of One’s Own to become one of the founding texts of feminist criticism. However, it lacks the key aspects that later waves of feminism, especially the third wave, have struggled to bring to the forefront: intersectionality and embracing collectivity.
Her words—“But, nevertheless, she had certain advantages which women of far greater gift lacked even half a century ago. Men were no longer to her ‘the opposing faction’; she need not waste her time railing against them; she need not climb onto the roof and ruin her peace of mind longing for travel, experience and a knowledge of the world and character that were denied her”—exemplify how she celebrates the moment when women no longer feel that men are “the opposing faction.” Yet, as a woman—especially, a woman of colour—in the 21st century, where news articles are still filled with threats of domestic violence, femicide, transphobia, and acid attacks over the simplest matters, Woolf’s dissuasion of rallying against men feels both privileged and complicit in a world still plagued by the effects of patriarchy.
When she grows angry at a professor for wrongly disparaging a woman’s voice in the British Museum, that anger remains central to her critique of women’s limitations. Yet, contrastingly, her urge to condescendingly discipline women for their approach to feminism feels white-washed. Claiming feminism’s fight is over—when only a fraction of women worldwide have achieved basic equality—is a mischaracterisation of what feminism truly stands for.
Despite my differences with Woolf’s feminist theory—often fueled by differences in race and era—she undeniably created rooms and spaces for women. Her essays and novels opened doors for many. In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf doesn’t just talk about women and literature—she questions the entire way we think about women in history and scholarship. Instead of relying on cold, logical arguments, she uses imagination and storytelling to fill in the silences history has left about women. She believes that true art should burn away the personal and reflect something more intense and universal—a kind of emotional clarity she calls "incandescence." Her essay becomes a kind of performance, not just arguing for women’s voices in literature, but showing what that voice can look like when it’s free, creative, and fiercely intelligent.
I had previously read excerpts from this novel for a class in university, which had me interested in reading the full text, but I found myself enjoying it much more than I even expected. The class had taken more of an interest in the more theoretical parts of the text, so that we could dissect her arguments, but I wasn’t expecting so much humor and narrative elements.
While I think separating the two makes it easier to digest what she is trying to get across, you are missing so much of her personality and perspective engaging with the text in this way. It’s like what Virginia was saying about the histories of female authors past being all but nonexistent. Some of their works survive them, but nothing of their circumstance, the building blocks for their work, so getting to know Virginia through this is very enjoyable.
The love that she has for writing, and writers, is palpable. She is a student of the craft in every sense, and even when she is analyzing something that she recognizes as not being as good as it could be, she is finding so many positives to highlight, and ways to justify and explain their work, in the absence of their own stories. This whole idea gets talked about in depth in an essay I read by Alice Walker, from her book ‘In Search of Our Mothers Gardens’. A pseudo speculative and somewhat somber work wondering what kind of artists our mothers would be, though the way they lived was also an art in itself. I may need to reread the book, because I think it’s possible given the time frame that this book was referenced there.
On the topic of having a room of one’s own, Virginia is clearly right and we can see this with the explosion of fantastic female writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. Not only having the tools and the time to write is not always enough. Men have long been afforded the option to live in a way that is conducive to nothing but enriching their minds. They don’t need to hope that a rich aunt feels an namesake bond, allowing them to pursue (in secret) a career in writing. They don’t need to steal a glance at the books that their brother or father have brought home from the library at the mens only college. To have a room of ones own is not only a luxury, but a basic right that was not being afforded to women in the time that Virginia is writing this, and in some places still is not.
On many topics in this book in relation to relationships, sexuality, gender (though she doesn’t have the modern language we would use today) Virginia is truly ahead of her time. Virginia Woolf, you would have truly loved multiple hour long video essays on youtube.
While I think separating the two makes it easier to digest what she is trying to get across, you are missing so much of her personality and perspective engaging with the text in this way. It’s like what Virginia was saying about the histories of female authors past being all but nonexistent. Some of their works survive them, but nothing of their circumstance, the building blocks for their work, so getting to know Virginia through this is very enjoyable.
The love that she has for writing, and writers, is palpable. She is a student of the craft in every sense, and even when she is analyzing something that she recognizes as not being as good as it could be, she is finding so many positives to highlight, and ways to justify and explain their work, in the absence of their own stories. This whole idea gets talked about in depth in an essay I read by Alice Walker, from her book ‘In Search of Our Mothers Gardens’. A pseudo speculative and somewhat somber work wondering what kind of artists our mothers would be, though the way they lived was also an art in itself. I may need to reread the book, because I think it’s possible given the time frame that this book was referenced there.
On the topic of having a room of one’s own, Virginia is clearly right and we can see this with the explosion of fantastic female writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. Not only having the tools and the time to write is not always enough. Men have long been afforded the option to live in a way that is conducive to nothing but enriching their minds. They don’t need to hope that a rich aunt feels an namesake bond, allowing them to pursue (in secret) a career in writing. They don’t need to steal a glance at the books that their brother or father have brought home from the library at the mens only college. To have a room of ones own is not only a luxury, but a basic right that was not being afforded to women in the time that Virginia is writing this, and in some places still is not.
On many topics in this book in relation to relationships, sexuality, gender (though she doesn’t have the modern language we would use today) Virginia is truly ahead of her time. Virginia Woolf, you would have truly loved multiple hour long video essays on youtube.
.
من هنوز از ویرجینا وولف کتاب دیگه ای نخوندم، اما داستان خودش رو بارها شنیدم.
انتظار این واقع بینی رو ازش نداشتم.
واقع بینی ای که حتی وقتی مخالف شیوه نگاه کردنش بودم نمیشه انکار کرد داشت به واقعیت نگاه میکرد. چیزی که بوده، هست و خواهد بود.
و این نگاه به واقعیت شایسته تحسینه از هر کس و در هر زمان.
لینک طاقچه
من هنوز از ویرجینا وولف کتاب دیگه ای نخوندم، اما داستان خودش رو بارها شنیدم.
انتظار این واقع بینی رو ازش نداشتم.
واقع بینی ای که حتی وقتی مخالف شیوه نگاه کردنش بودم نمیشه انکار کرد داشت به واقعیت نگاه میکرد. چیزی که بوده، هست و خواهد بود.
و این نگاه به واقعیت شایسته تحسینه از هر کس و در هر زمان.
لینک طاقچه