nevarren 's review for:

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

3.0

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3 1/2 stars, really. I found portions of A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN resonant and insightful, such as Woolf's lament that women lack their own writing tradition to draw from, and the ending was hopeful and inspiring and substantive. However, I found Woolf's aesthetic judgments obnoxious and was particularly frustrated by her 30-page tirade on the relative merits and failings of JANE EYRE compared with PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (see also: her insistence that Austen possessed "less genius" than Charlotte Bronte). It is that, more than anything, that sticks with me from this book a week later. That's disappointing, because there are real insights in this book, and it is written with Woolf's characteristically beautiful prose.