A Room of One's Own

Surely, all can create great literature, only when the means are given.

7 Oct, 20245 min read

'A Room of One's Own' by the famous feminist and modernist writer Virginia Woolf is an extended essay published in 1928. The essay serves as an important feminist criticism of the society and how it is socially and culturally constructed through gender. The book itself is actually a history of women and their writings from Woolf's perspective. It is based on two lectures given by Woolf at Cambridge and Oxford. Even though the main audience of these lectures are the female students, Woolf notices that both she herself and the students are being disrespected and discriminated against due to their gender. She notices the gap between men and women in education and starts her narration from there. She seeks to find an answer to find why there is such a gap between these two genders and why women aren't given the same opportunities as men. She notices that women not only suffer in their education and career, but they are also segregated in their day to day life as well. Women's life standards and rules are nowhere near to those of men.

Woolf begins her narration from this comparison and carries it onto literature and starts discussing why most of the great literature was made my men. The Western canon did not have a place for women and didn't regard their writings as significant. But why was this? Surely, men didn't write everything for centuries, there had to be some women writers as well, and of course there were. However, only a small number of women were able to write and many of those had to use pseudonyms. In order for their books to be read, women writers had to publish them under male names to avoid the misogyny. For example, George Elliot stood in place for Mary Ann Evans, Charlotte and Emily Bronte published under the names Currer and Ellis Bell.

'For it is a perrenial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet'

There were a few other major women writers as well, however they were not among ordinary people. Usually, these writers were of higher social and economic classes. Only through this social and economic security were they able to find the time, money, education, and freedom to create literature. Not all women were so lucky, and this is where the essay takes its name from. Woolf argued that women were not incapable of creating great literature, instead they simply didn't have the means to do so. In order to write freely, a woman needed some money and a room of her own. A woman needed her own freedom and indiviudality in order to create. However, this was not possible due to the domestic tasks given to women. They had to take care of the household, the children and their husbands. Literature was intertwined with life itself, but that life was dominated by patriarchy and had no place for women. Only a selected few were mythologized, but some weren't even represented as capable indiviudals in literature itself, much less make it.

Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips, but in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband

Woolf takes some important women writers into consideration as well. The first of these women would be Aphra Behn, the first ever woman to financially support herself by her writings. The other two writers that Woolf compares and contrasts are Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. According to her, Jane Austen is somewhat of an ideal as she writes in a feminine way and not in any relation to masculinity or patriarchy. She criticizes Bronte for trying to imitate men. However, Woolf also suggests that the ideal way of creating literature should be through androgyny. The mind should both have the male and the female, making creativity the result of the conjunction between these two.

Another element of her narration is Judith Shakespeare, the fictional sister of William Shakespeare. Like her brother, Judith is also interested and talented in literature. However, while her brother is encouraged to write and go to school, Judith is expected to do the housework. When William goes to London to pursue his career as a playwright and artist, Judith also runs away. She tries to find a job in a theater as an actor but no one takes her seriously since she is a woman. A manager comes out and says that he will give her a job, only to sexually abuse Judith and leave her all on her own. With her dreams crashed and nothing in hand, Judith finds the escape in killing herself. While these happen to Judith, William is engraving his name to history, but none remembers Judith.

'Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say.'