Virginia Woolf

This story grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. It ranges over Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted and imaginary sister, and over the effects of poverty and chastity on female creativity.

A Room of One's Own

kite

"Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

An extended essay which was based on a series of lectures that Woolf delivered at two women's colleges which are part of Cambridge University. The essay explores women both as writers and characters in fiction.

Paige Leitner

Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so-- I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals-- and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the  common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton's bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born.

How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Brontë or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on to paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems wothout singing them, was often a woman.

Women do not write books about men-- a fact that I could not help welcoming with relief, for if I had first to read all that men have written about women, then all that women have written about men, the aloe that flowers once in a hundred years would flower twice before I could set pen to paper. 

Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?

The very reason why that poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not recognize it in the first place; often for some reason one fearsome it; watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew. Hence the difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of this difficulty that one cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet. For this reason-- that my memory failed me--the argument flagged for want of material. But why, I continued, moving on towards Headingley, have we stopped humming under our breath at luncheon parties?

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” Considered as one of the classics of twentieth century feminist literature, The Room of One’s Own is a book-length essay written by Virginia Woolf. Delineating the basic requirements of a woman to write, the author incorporates detailed revelations of the various power structures that stop a woman to excel and elucidate her creative capabilities. Illustrating the importance of women’s literacy through a fictional character named Judith Shakespeare, The Room of One’s Own encourages women to rise above patriarchal monotony and set a unique literary tradition of their own!

Room Of One's Own

anna

“I” is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. 

Emily McMeans

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

“…if two sexes are quite inadequate considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?”

Ausrine Blazyte

when children cease to be altogether desirable, women cease to be altogether necessary. 

That is it. Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own. However, thanks to the toils of those obscure women in the past, of whom I wish we knew more, thanks, curiously enough to two wars, the Crimean which let Florence Nightingale out of her drawing-room, and the European War which opened the doors to the average woman some sixty years later, these evils are in the way to be bettered. 

Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques - literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women. 

And since a novel has this correspondence to real life, its values are to some extent those of real life. But it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are 'important'; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes trivial. And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insigniicant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. A scene in a battlefield is more important than a scene in a shop - everywhere and much more subtly the difference of value persists. The whole structure. therefore, of the early nineteenth-century novel was raised, if one was a woman, by a mind which was slightly pulled from the straight, and made to alter its clear vision in deference to external authority. One has only to skim those old forgotten novels and listen to the tone of voice in which they are written to divine that the writer was meeting criticism; she was saying this by way of aggression, or that by way of conciliation. She was admitting that she was 'only a woman', or protesting that she was 'as good as a man'. She met that criticism as her temperament dictated, with docility and diffidence, or with anger and emphasis. 

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would sutfer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged felow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

 Life for both sexes and I looked 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 as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality. which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority - ir may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney, for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination over other people.

Thus she enacts the way women have been led to censor themselves, to assume exclusion even before they are exchuded. Yet at the same time we feel here emerging in Woolf a sort of pride in being on the outside. 

Zainab 

Was ist »Realität«? Offenbar etwas sehr Sprunghaftes, Unzuverlässiges bald auf einer staubigen Straße, bald in einem Zeitungsfetzen im Rinnstein, bald als Narzisse in der Sonne zu finden. Sie erleuchtet eine Gruppe Menschen in einem Zimmer und prägt sich einem hingesagten Satz auf. Sie überfällt einen auf dem Heimweg unter den Sternen, macht die stille Welt realer als die Welt der Worte und dann wieder taucht sie in einem Omnibus inmitten des Lärms vom Piccadilly Circus áuf. Manchmal weilt sie wohl auch nur in Umrissen, zu fern, als dass wir sie er- kennen könnten. Doch sie heilt und verewigt was immer sie berührt. 

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College, Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics, ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Carlotte Brontë to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author and essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist and modernist, and the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed A Room of One's Own, you might like Woolf's Orlando, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Probably the most influential piece of non-fictional writing by a woman in this century' Hermione Lee, Financial Times

Helen 

Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. 

But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. 

I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. 

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. 

Macy HB

She had a sensibility that was very wide, eager and free. It responded to an almost imperceptible touch on it. It feasted like a plant net stood in the air on every sight and sound that came its way. It ranged, too, very subtly and curiously amongst almost unknown or unrecorded things; it lighted on small things and showed that perhaps they were not small after all. It brought buried things to light and made one wonder what need there had been to bury them.

It does not matter which it was; she was thinking of something other than the thing it’s self. Down comes her book upon our heads. There was a flaw in the center of it. And I thought of all the women’s novels that lie scattered, like small pock-marked apples in an orchard about the second hand book shops of London. It was the flaw in the center that had rotted them. She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others.

For masterpieces are not single and solitary birth; they are the outcome of many years of thinking common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice

Based on two talks given by the author, and first published in September 1929, Virginia Woolf's seminal essay revolves around the central claim that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Outlining the importance of education and financial independence, Woolf draws up a history of women writers and demonstrates how they had to operate as outsiders in a society that sought to exclude them.

A Room of One's Own (Hero Classics)

I had difficulty extracting the sentences and understanding some references Woolf mentioned. I understand that she was highlighting the unfairness of the literary world for women in the 19th century. She wanted to provide examples of women writers who didn’t have a room of their own yet still managed to write fiction. What I don’t understand is the point of her criticism towards them when she previously mentioned male writers, but I could review some of my highlights and see how she took this perspective when nobody else would—to see women writers from a different light.

🏹

I'm absolutely speechless after reading this. 

While Woolf's fiction is so well done, this mix of a fictionalized narrative with the tone and style of an essay is incredible. I think this might be a good book to use for my dissertation because it just makes so much commentary on things like gender, literature, politics, and so much more. 

I'm absolutely speechless after reading this. 

While Woolf's fiction is so well done, this mix of a fictionalized narrative with the tone and style of an essay is incredible. I think this might be a good book to use for my dissertation because it just makes so much commentary on things like gender, literature, politics, and so much more. 

Clay Carey

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister: a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different.This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. But if only she had found the means to create, urges Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay,Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give a voice to those who have none. Her message is simple: A woman must have a fixed income and a room of her own in order to have the freedom to create.

A Room of One’s Own

From the pretext of 'a room of one's own', i didn't expect how it would so sublimely touches on equality and privilege issues. Woolf probed how the English culture before 1800's deprived women of intellectual agency hence the lack of literary trace by women from that time. A shame that literary geniuses might have been born and die without touching a pen simply because then a woman couldn't afford the time and energy, saves from what was highly demanded from her societal role, not to mention that a female writer would be ridiculed, and denied apprenticeship and all the access necessary to hone the mastery. And the fact remains till now that only the privileged with a room of one's own can have their mind roam and aspire to make masterpieces, quite a hard pill to swallow. 
Woolf wrote beautifully so reading this was a treat. I'm not feeling the 5th chapter tho. She got some points there but i don't think that a book is a place to take a direct jab at other authors, especially the one she thought was a lesser genius. She put it nicely in the end but i'm still a bit iffy. It'd be a 3.6/5 from me.

if I were to get a text tattooed on my forehead from start to finish it would be this…

Niki Sotiropoulou-Nassika

Virginia Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of writers and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.

Una stanza tutta per sé

virginia woolf is a queen. the way she has to explain her thoughts is amazing. the fluidity, the music of her words is unbelievable. some pages seemed to me not very smooth and sometimes I had a bit of difficulty to continue without interruptions. but this doesn't matter compared to Virginia's genius. as a woman I feel guilty about all the possibilities I have (which women in the past didn't have) and that are not used properly to improve my genre. 

Maria Pia Cerbo 

jess

"Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."

This book revolves the theme around Women and Fiction, so it naturally explores the critical distinction of male and female writers back then, and their prospects. Well back then, women had been so oppressed to the point that the oppression has coincided within their nature. Writing poetry or novels have been such an obstacle. Woolf orchestrated this whole essay on describing each prominent female writers, such as Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, etc also male writers such as Shelley, Tolstoy, Wordsworth, etc that might or might not be androgynous and why. 

"Virility has now become self-conscious-men, that is to say, are now writing only with the male side of their brains. It is a mistake for a woman to read them, for she will inevitably look for something that she will not find."

This whole writer-sphere-short-expository-essay is a definite fundamental for all writers out there. Woolf mentioned, "Women have always been poor since the beginning of time, had less intellectual freedom, not a dog's chance of writing poetry, therefore I laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own."

interesting thoughts but mostly white-women focused which is too bad but understandable because of when it was written. nonetheless, i love that now more women are in literature, not to only express their anger towards the patriarchy but also to make us travel through new worlds.

mari🍵

Soha

I struggled with the first chapter. Virgnia Woolf employs a fictional narrator to get her point across but I couldn't stop reading it after I got past the first chapter. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it - while standing in the morning sun in my balcony, while cooking, while getting into bed, while working on my laptop. 

While this tiny book packs a powerful punch, I think it's important to note that she doesn't touch upon many aspects of intersectionality.

The essay begins with a question and it's a delight to see it being explored and answered in the stream-of-consciousness style of Virginia Woolf.

lili🎐

General Press

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister—a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, she takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one—women must have a fixed income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.

Hannah Yang

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison."

I've wanted to read something by Virginia Woolf ever since I read All the Bright Places, and I am so glad that I started with A Room of One's Own. What an inspiring, beautifully-written piece on creativity—and a call to action that I think will always be relevant to women (and men)! 

Woolf carefully considers what circumstances have hampered the ability for women to express themselves freely and wholly in their art. At the same time, this is no indignant cry for help: she ends with the argument that today's women must not make excuses for themselves, and must take advantage of their intellectual privileges (that past women artists have fought for and did not get to enjoy themselves). I loved the idea of writing as a kind of continual art, which builds upon previous ideas and events rather than emerging from a single voice; a sort of human symphony. I feel inspired, and am asking myself now: how will I shape my voice within this symphony? What are the layers of unfruitful emotion, prejudices against myself and others, and "proving-myself-ness" that I must peel away to get at the real message I want to send? That is, now that I have a room of my own, what will I do with it?

This is my first impression of Woolf, and she did not disappoint. Across the century which separates her writing and my reading, so much rings true. Her belief in women and her conviction that women are not naturally less than men but must still undertake the hard work of proving it, has earned much respect from me. Doubly so due to the wonderful words and sentences which she built this book from. 

It is so easy to forget that not a century ago, no women was known who was mediocre. One had to be phenomenal, and more than that liked by those who chose what to revere, those being primarily men. This work will make me smile the next time I read a less than great book by a woman; how lucky we are to be allowed to create bad art! To speak oddly and look undone and express what we truly feel! How better off the world is, man, woman, and all of the other sexes which we have so much to learn from, that women now have a voice. 

This book was a series of revelations. A reminder of my luck and that I am more than me, I am also a steward of the legacies of the women before me. What a wonderful comfort knowing I’ll never be alone and a solemn journey to live a life independent of men, a life few women have been able to have. 

This is my first impression of Woolf, and she did not disappoint. Across the century which separates her writing and my reading, so much rings true. Her belief in women and her conviction that women are not naturally less than men but must still undertake the hard work of proving it, has earned much respect from me. Doubly so due to the wonderful words and sentences which she built this book from. 

It is so easy to forget that not a century ago, no women was known who was mediocre. One had to be phenomenal, and more than that liked by those who chose what to revere, those being primarily men. This work will make me smile the next time I read a less than great book by a woman; how lucky we are to be allowed to create bad art! To speak oddly and look undone and express what we truly feel! How better off the world is, man, woman, and all of the other sexes which we have so much to learn from, that women now have a voice. 

This book was a series of revelations. A reminder of my luck and that I am more than me, I am also a steward of the legacies of the women before me. What a wonderful comfort knowing I’ll never be alone and a solemn journey to live a life independent of men, a life few women have been able to have. 

I had tears in my eyes while I read. I wish I could talk to. Virginia and tell her it’s better now. I wish I could thank her for building the golden way for us, women today. We couldn’t have been serious writers and just humans without her. I love her and I hope that from heaven she can see that women don’t own a room, they own a whole apartment. We own apartments.

Yalin Tsikun

charisa

entirely unplanned, but this essay paired so well with babel. i found woolf’s candidness so refreshing, and her insights on how feminism should inform the literary canon relevant even in this age. appreciated her very genteel roasts of the patriarchy LOL. writers on writing seems to provoke limitless conversation about the greater world.

It's so powerful and it just makes one perceive things so differently.

akshita

marti

this took me longer than it should have for how short it is but i’m honestly glad i took my time with it. virginia woolf’s writing is so complex to me i had to rethink every word i read but it was so worth it at the end, it all leads to her conclusion in which she gives women an advice that is so important i wish every woman read it, it honestly can’t be said better than the way she did. also she’s so funny i feel like she would have a blast arguing on twitter

Matthew Royal

Brilliant method to addressing gendered domains. Woolf provides a great picture into the unequal footing men and women have at every stage of life, and explores the idea that what society considers important or historic may be what only men consider important. 

I love how she attacks arguments head-on and re-scopes existing commentary on women, while asking her own interesting questions. It's difficult to think that someone could read Woolf and not come away a feminist.

A room of one's own

Gillian Rose

Technically 4.5 stars.

This is not what I expected at all but it was a really well-written and thought out essay.

Meghan Navoy

absolutely amazing read, one of my favorite books.

Warum haben Frauen bisher nicht viel geschrieben? Was hat ihnen bisher gefehlt? Was hat sie daran gehindert? Was brauchen Frauen um geistige Freiheit und Kreativität zu erlangen? Ich liebe die Gedankengänge von der Autorin und wie sie analysiert

This volume combines two books by Virginia Woolf which are among the greatest contributions to feminist literature this century. They consider the implications of the historical exclusion of women from education and from economic independence.

And, Three Guineas

Beatriz Pereira

I love her. She's an icon, she's a legend.

honestly incredible. mommas favorite book and now one of mine too 

Virginia

A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928. Ranging over Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and why neither of them could have written War and Peace, over the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (and imaginary) sister, over the effects of poverty and chastity on female creativity, she gives us one of the greatest feminist polemics of the century.

Maia Wijohn

This book encourages me to write, it shows me that writing is worthwhile. I feel it stresses the idea that women should write as they please and that we really owe it to the generations of women who weren't able to and the women who paved the way for us now to be able to write. It makes me realise that I must take advantage of this privileged position I am in where my expenses are paid and I have time on my hands (I'm a teenager).
Some of the ideas about gender are outdated of course as it was written nearly a hundred years ago. For example, it says that male and female fit perfectly together and make one whole and that each mind is perhaps the same, made of male and female. This is obviously incorrect as it completely ignores queer relationships and also people simply do not need to be completed by others they are always 'whole'. But the outdated ideas of the time serve as context of the times, it shows how radical and important the ideas of this book were. There is so much to take from this book and it's a great insight into feminist history. It is a crucial read for anyone interested in feminism and literature.

A Room of One's Own

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