Many intelligent and creative women can make great contributions to the society if they are given space and time. However, for many years women have been viewed as less intelligent, merely mothers, and objects of ownership. In A Room of One’s Own, a novel by Virginia Woolf, the author argues that Shakespeare’s sister is as talented as her brother and that she can make great contributions to...Read more 1759
A Room of One’s Own
“A Room of One’s Own” is considered the first major work in feminist criticism.
Woolf deploys a number of methodologies–historical and sociological analysis, fictional hypothesis, abd philosophy, notably–to answer her initial question of why there have been so few female writers. She ties their minority status largely to socioeconomic factors, specifically their poverty and lack of privacy. Her mantra throughout the essay is that a woman must have 500 pounds a year and a room of her own if she is to write creatively.
Woolf also exposes the gender-consciousness that she believes cripples both male and female writers. Most men, she maintains, derogate women to maintain their own superiority; most women are angry and insecure about their inferior status in society. Male writing, then, is too aggressive, whereas women’s writing is reactive. Both genders thus obscure their subjects and instead focus on themselves and their own personal grievances. The writer of incandescent genius, Woolf maintains, rises beyond his or her petty gripes and attains a heightened, objective relationship with reality; the subject is the world, not the writer’s self.
Even though the texts were composed in different times and different literary forms, both composers sought to criticise the way that their context operated. In Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1928) and Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’(1962), both composer’s purpose is to bring both men and women into a clearer understanding of the ways in which women have been held back...Read more 977
This fragment is part of A Room of One’s Own, a book by Virginia Woolf that reunites and recreates the contents of a series of lectures she delivered in Cambridge in 1928. The author was invited to talk about the topic “Women and Novel”; however, she made use of her innovative style to devise a book in which fiction, history, and her own way to understand the world gathered to create a text...Read more 776
2011 HSC In what ways does a comparative study accentuate the distinctive contexts of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Room of One’s Own? Context is vividly reflected through artistic texts over time in order to assert the author’s opinion on the same human issues, such as truth. Virginia Woolf’s A room of one’s own (1928) dismantles the strength of the patriarchy and their singular...Read more 626
The View Towards Feminism and A Room of One’s Own Written in 1929, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf has been broken apart into many different view points and meanings that in a whole, affect woman and/or artists. The interesting thing about Woolf’s piece, is that it’s an essay that uses fictional characters and narration that would later be used to debate whether it was completely a true...Read more 547
A Room of One’s Own Summary Virginia Woolf, giving a lecture on women and fiction, tells her audience she is not sure if the topic should be what women are like; the fiction women write; the fiction written about women; or a combination of the three. Instead, she has come up with “one minor point–a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction...Read more 452
“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.” — — “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” — — “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” — — “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting...Read more 145
A week ago, the narrator crosses a lawn t the fictional Sobering university, tries to enter the library, and passes by the chapel. She is intercepted at each station and reminded that women are not allowed to do such things without accompanying men. She goes to lunch, where the excellent food and relaxing atmosphere make for good conversation. Back at Burnham, the women’s college where...Read more 138
Some of the critics argue that Wolf way of writing scrambled the ideas that were supposed to be taken from the essay. Others believe that the style in which the essay was wrote had no affect on its meanings involving women and society. Such beliefs lead to never-ending discussions on one of the most important works by a leading writer of the Modernists movement. The early 20th century...Read more 137
In short, Wolf builds the image of “a mom of one’s own” as a necessity for women in order to develop their lives, in general, and their literary creativity, in particular. She focuses on a series of conditions that had always been neglected to women: leisure time, privacy, and financial independence (“A woman must have money and a room of her own is she is to write...Read more 134
We learn through comparing both texts that in order to obtain truth, both genders’ perspectives must be taken into account Wolf, a constitutional suffragette, empowers women writers by first exploring the nature of women in fiction, and then by incorporating ideas of the androgynous mind and individuality as it exists in a women’s experience as a writer. ‘they had been...Read more 129
Virginia Woolf delivered two lectures at Cambridge University on the topic of women and literature. It was the time when just a decade ago, the right to vote was given to the women. When she delivered the lecture, it was a burning desire of young, well-educated and eager women to get an equal place for them. Woolf was also impressed by the standard of living which women had, as compared with...Read more 74