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A review by midici
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
4.0
The crux of Virginia Woolf’s essay about women and fiction is that in order to truly create and write, the way men have for centuries, is to gain the financial independence and space that men have enjoyed. This is obviously a dated essay but so much of it still resonates.
She begins far back in history and then slowly moves forward, first looking at how men wrote and described women, then moving into how women now write about themselves. She spends time giving credit to several other women authors while she does so.
“She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote… for here begins the freedom of the mind, or rather the possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it likes… all women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn… for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”
When Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own it was only 9 years after (*some) women gained the right to vote, so her essay explores the sort of negative and positive reactions around the growing changes of women’s position in society as they gained new rights.
She spends some time delving into how different values were prized by different sexes, with male values being ‘important’ and women values being ‘frivolous’. Woolf discusses woman writing about enjoying other women; the complexity of women’s relationships with each other, as seen by women, not as simple and one-dimensional. Previously women were only seen in relation to men, partially due to the fact that relationships with men were all they were supposed to have: not careers, or education, or triumphs, etc.
Men’s insistence on women’s inferiority was a reflection of their own fear – if they were not better than woman, they would have nothing. The excessive anger of men at the suffragette movement was because they simply weren’t used to being challenged: “He… does it on purpose. He does it in protest. He is protesting against the equality of the other sex by asserting his own superiority.”
Woolf does not end by putting down men or upholding women, but with a chapter on why, in her opinion, the best works were a representation of both men and women working together, as equals. She is hopeful that even as so much has changed, it will continue changing towards a more balanced society.
“By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourself of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books or loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”
She begins far back in history and then slowly moves forward, first looking at how men wrote and described women, then moving into how women now write about themselves. She spends time giving credit to several other women authors while she does so.
“She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote… for here begins the freedom of the mind, or rather the possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it likes… all women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn… for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”
When Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own it was only 9 years after (*some) women gained the right to vote, so her essay explores the sort of negative and positive reactions around the growing changes of women’s position in society as they gained new rights.
She spends some time delving into how different values were prized by different sexes, with male values being ‘important’ and women values being ‘frivolous’. Woolf discusses woman writing about enjoying other women; the complexity of women’s relationships with each other, as seen by women, not as simple and one-dimensional. Previously women were only seen in relation to men, partially due to the fact that relationships with men were all they were supposed to have: not careers, or education, or triumphs, etc.
Men’s insistence on women’s inferiority was a reflection of their own fear – if they were not better than woman, they would have nothing. The excessive anger of men at the suffragette movement was because they simply weren’t used to being challenged: “He… does it on purpose. He does it in protest. He is protesting against the equality of the other sex by asserting his own superiority.”
Woolf does not end by putting down men or upholding women, but with a chapter on why, in her opinion, the best works were a representation of both men and women working together, as equals. She is hopeful that even as so much has changed, it will continue changing towards a more balanced society.
“By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourself of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books or loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”