“… a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Virginia Woolf presents this as her thesis as a way to shed light on the plethora of restrictions placed on the minds of women by society. By using a fictional narrator and a hypothetical situation, Woolf is able to draw attention to the societal norms and ignorance which hinder women’s abilities to express themselves through writing. A common occurrence from the very get-go is the presence of constant distractions during the narrator’s train of thought. From seeing a cat with no tail to being escorted out from a male-only area of the Oxbridge campus, the narrator makes it evident that it is essentially impossible for her to reflect on her ideas and thus spark the creativity that it is inside her. These distractions are representative of the persistent reminders of the ineptitude of females, which shape their minds into actually thinking that they are not as intelligent as men.
In order to further highlight the vast discrepancies in terms of privileges for both sexes, Woolf paints a compelling picture of William Shakespeare and his “sister” Judith. She states that similarly to her brother, Judith sought to explore her creative side and express herself through writing. Unfortunately, “She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil.” As William Shakespeare was mastering his craft in the theaters of London, Judith was subjected to cooking and cleaning in the Shakespeare household. As readers, we feel the anguish of Judith and are taken aback when she commits suicide, with no work of literature to leave behind. Despite being an exaggerated hypothetical situation, the case of Judith Shakespeare is striking because of its underlying truth. We see two siblings of the same household who grow up to be vastly different from one another due to the confines placed on females in society. A formal education is essential to furthering the genius and free-thinking ability of females and denying that is detrimental to the brilliant minds of females who yearn to do so.
Woolf supports her thesis by stating that men are both materially and socially privileged from the day that they are born. “A Room of One’s Own” was written over eighty five years ago and this statement still holds some truth to it. Since 1929, women have been appointed to the Supreme Court, entered space, and lead multi billion dollar companies. While this may all be true, the majority of women currently face issues in the workplace, politics, and other facets of modern day America. Suffragists are constantly advocating for equal treatment and the words of Virginia Woolf from generations ago serve as a reminder of the uphill battle that women still struggle with to this day.