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A review by erinastin
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
3.0
2.5 Stars
Wow, ok. It’s 3 in the morning, and I’m currently on hour 15 of a 24-hour readathon, so I apologize in advance if my review makes no sense:
I thought I was going to love this. I went into this thinking it was one of those classic, feminist, “every woman should read this” pieces. Um, no. Woolf makes some excellent points about the ways in which women like the Bröntes and Jane Austen had to struggle just to be afforded a modicum of the privileges their male counterparts enjoyed. Her essay could have simply been an ardent cry for equality and women’s liberation framed through the lens of women authors and I would’ve thought, hm, interesting, I see how this could’ve been revolutionary in the 1920s. But no…
Woolf’s rampant internalized misogyny was quite shocking. It presented itself when she denigrated Charlotte Bronte for seeping her own frustration, pain, and passion into Jane Eyre. Woolf argues that it ruins Charlotte’s prose, while someone like Jane Austen who maintains a clear head, is able to produce higher caliber fiction despite being less of a “genius.” I found it absolutely bizarre that Woolf was essentially telling her audience to not put themselves into their work. Isn’t that what makes art great?
I appreciated the overall message of “women deserve better,” but not for the reasons that if they have a room of their own and five hundred a year they will no longer need to sour their writing with their outrageous emotions. I understand this may have been revolutionary at the time, but they way we view feminism has changed so much in the past 90 years, that I do not understand why people are saying every woman needs to read this without at least applying a critical eye to the work.
Wow, ok. It’s 3 in the morning, and I’m currently on hour 15 of a 24-hour readathon, so I apologize in advance if my review makes no sense:
I thought I was going to love this. I went into this thinking it was one of those classic, feminist, “every woman should read this” pieces. Um, no. Woolf makes some excellent points about the ways in which women like the Bröntes and Jane Austen had to struggle just to be afforded a modicum of the privileges their male counterparts enjoyed. Her essay could have simply been an ardent cry for equality and women’s liberation framed through the lens of women authors and I would’ve thought, hm, interesting, I see how this could’ve been revolutionary in the 1920s. But no…
Woolf’s rampant internalized misogyny was quite shocking. It presented itself when she denigrated Charlotte Bronte for seeping her own frustration, pain, and passion into Jane Eyre. Woolf argues that it ruins Charlotte’s prose, while someone like Jane Austen who maintains a clear head, is able to produce higher caliber fiction despite being less of a “genius.” I found it absolutely bizarre that Woolf was essentially telling her audience to not put themselves into their work. Isn’t that what makes art great?
I appreciated the overall message of “women deserve better,” but not for the reasons that if they have a room of their own and five hundred a year they will no longer need to sour their writing with their outrageous emotions. I understand this may have been revolutionary at the time, but they way we view feminism has changed so much in the past 90 years, that I do not understand why people are saying every woman needs to read this without at least applying a critical eye to the work.