paninigoweenie 's review for:

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

4.0

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

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In this extended essay, Woolf describes the societal barriers women encountered upon wanting to participate in intellectual endeavors such as science, mathematics, education, philosophy, and, of course, literature. In a semi-prolix narrative, Woolf moves us along various places in a fictional description to describe the real plights of women in fiction. She quotes real male and female authors to support her thesis that women need a stable income and a quiet room for thought to write fiction. Famous authors are mentioned and explored, such as Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and Leo Tolstoy, as well as several male poets and Shakespeare. My favorite analogy was that of Shakespeare’s sister, that a woman denied her passion lives in all of us, an immortal spirit of ardor and fortitude determined to inspire our hand upon the page. 

But, most importantly, women must distinguish themselves from the writing of men. Women should not write like men; they should write as women do and forget their sex while conjuring a different world. 

“This terseness, this shortwindedness, might mean that she was afraid of something; afraid of being called ‘sentimental’ perhaps; or she remembers that women’s writing has been called flowery and so provides a superfluidity of thorns.”