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cliffydoog 's review for:
A Room of One's Own
by Virginia Woolf
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.