This reading from Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own is about Virginia’s view, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (339), and the process she went through to conclude at this opinion. She admits that this “leaves the great problem of the true nature of fiction unsolved” (339). The whole essay is her explanation on how she concluded on the fact that women need money and that they are unequal to men. “I propose making use of all liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here” (340).
She chooses not to answer to the problem of women and fiction and she instead tries to go deeper by talking about different famous writers. The “I” she uses in her story is not her. It is not important what is the name that we choose to give her, but she talks about her experiences and her thoughts so that the reader can see where her opinion started. She reviews the state of scholarship, both theoretical and historical, concerning women. She also elaborates an aesthetics based on the principle of “incandescence”. I believe that she uses the imagery of light and fire in chapter 1 because she wants to describe her aesthetic side of view.
Something that I really liked is how careful Woolf was in chapter 2, not to blame men for the unfair treatment of women. She blames the universe and its violence stating “life for both sexes—and I look at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion that we are, it calls for confidence in oneself” (357).
In chapter 3, Woolf continues talking more about the relationship that women had with literature during the time of Elizabeth. She writes “Here am I asking why women did not write poetry in the Elizabethan age, and I am not sure how they were educated; whether they were taught to write; whether they had sitting rooms to themselves; how many women had children before they were twenty-one; what, in short, they did from eight in the morning till eight at night” (364).
I would like to raise a question on that last part. What are the differences that the relationship between women and literature in the Elizabethan years are with today. Do you think that female writers have the exact same value as male writers in the 21st century? Also, during our semester we read about female writers that weren’t wealthy but they still wrote great literature. Do you think that nowadays is more important to be wealthy than centuries before in order to be able to be a great writer?
I partially agree with your opinion about the chapter 2 that she is not blaming men for putting superiority over women but she concludes it results from the instinct. This instinct “are not within their control”(360). She contributes the innate superiority of men to that “there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination – over other people”(358), which is a feeling that they have to conquer, to rule other people to satisfy.
She questions why in the long history of literature or philosophy women don’t write books about men but there are piles of books about women by men. She thinks that “women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice it natural size”(358). To maintain the enlarged figure and fitness in the glass, men have to “go on giving judgement, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets”(358). So that’s why in Chapter 3, she says that the difficulty for male genius in literature is “world’s notorious indifference”(368), while in women’s case, it’s not just indifference but hostility. All of the social norms created by men only requires women’s obedience. For instance, she includes a dead bishop ” who declared that it was impossible for any women, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare”(364).
Then she reflects, that why she herself is looking at the other sex without any hatred and bitterness. She owe it to the legacy her aunt left for her, the fiver hundred pounds per year, which releases her from the hardness for women to earn money and frees her from the economic dependence towards a man. As she writes, ” indeed my aunt’s money unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing figure of a gentleman”(360). This sort of relationship, in which women economically rely on men, in her opinion, even contributes to why there are few female genius in literature. From the beginning of women’s life, they don’t get the same education as their brothers. As they grow up, they are assigned like a property to a husband. They are required to maintain chastity to their husbands, which “dictated anonymity to women”, because “publicity in women is detestable, anonymity runs in their blood”(367). This can explains why “Currer bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writing prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man”(367), so it’s so hard to find female names in the shelves of British Museum, in the history of literature.