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“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929). Discuss the possible meanings and applications of this statement in relation to the course material.

Virginia Woolf's essay “A Room of One's Own” is a landmark of a feminist’s thought of the twentieth century. It explores the history of women in literature in an unconventional and provocative way. To be more specific, the essay investigates the social circumstances and the material conditions under which women write. The conditions that she describes, financial independence, privacy and leisure time shed light to the situation of women in the literary tradition. Women were uniformly deprived of these basic prerequisites for literary production. Woolf’s essay is both a logical argumentation as well as a reconstruction. To be more specific, Woolf uses logical argumentation as well as some innovative elements of fiction to compensate for the gaps in the women’s history. She also uses a technique that modernists use, the stream of consciousness technique, which takes the reader to the minds of the characters. The phrase “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” from chapter one is one of the most famous if not the most famous line from “ A Room of One’s Own” and constitutes the thesis. It has a limited scope because it "leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved." (Kroneneberger, 1929). However, Woolf hopes to shed some light to these problems as well, at least to some extent. The phrase "I propose making use of all the liberties and licenses of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here—how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life" suggests that through fiction, Woolf is going to support her argument. (A Room of One’s Own, 2012). Woolf suggests that women need money, something to live on and a sponsorship of some kind. Having money is of the utmost importance for women. The quotation “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 . . .” explains why only a few women have written poetry successfully. (A Room of One’s Own, 2012). She believes it is easier for women to write good novels rather than good poetry because they are frequently interrupted because they do not have a room of their own and the formation of poetry is a process that should not be interrupted. So, Woolf implies that women authors will be less successful than their male counterparts because of the financial discrepancy between them. The narrator thinks that "if only Mrs. Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money" for the education of their daughters, it would be different. ( A Room of One’s Own , 2012). However, a great sacrifice would have been required. In addition, women did not have any legal rights over property. Woolf describes her own story and how the day that she received an inheritance from her aunt changed her life. She was lucky because her aunt used to give her five hundred pounds a year which was a very respectable sum for a young woman to live on. Unlike women from lower classes without good fortune, she had financial security and was actually able to focus on her writing. Then, she imagines the fate of the women who are not financially secure. She also imagines that it would be impossible for them to engage in writing. An example of a woman from a lower class who decided to write is Aphra Behn. She did not receive any respect from society and she was belittled. Aphra Behn was seen as seen as a deterrent against a life of "living by one's wits" rather than an example for younger women. ( A Room of One's Own ). Her literary production was seen as an unnatural thing. Woolf was able to pursue the life that she wanted. Now she has the time to think on her own. Thus, Woolf derives to a conclusion that women authors must have financial stability to write fiction. Every woman needs a room of her own in order to have personal space and time for herself without serving others in order to be able to engage in writing without being interrupted. Woolf is concerned with more than just the room itself. The room also serves as a symbol for many other issues such as privacy, leisure time and financial independence. The "room of one's own" is not strictly a spatial, physical concept. “A room of one’s own” can be viewed as a psychological construct, a place where one emotionally goes to and

writes. People who have a space of their own where they can reflect and have a will have ample energy to dispose on pursuits which in other circumstances would be frivolous. At that time, very few women and usually from the aristocracy had more opportunities to be successful authors. However, this is not a certain fact because at that time women’s life were not considered important, did not matter much, so they were not documented. As Woolf states, “ The life of the Elizabethan woman must be scattered about somewhere, could one collect it and make a book of it”. (Woolf, 1929, p.1341). When women are interrupted while they are writing they cannot concentrate and complete their work. In chapter one, the narrator describes an afternoon that she spent secluded in the shore of the river of the “Oxfridge” campus. She was thinking about what to write. She uses the metaphor of fishing. When she finally decided what she wanted to say, when she “got a bite”, she gets interrupted by a university security guard who tells her to stand on the gravel walk and not on the grass because she is not allowed to. "He was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was turf; there was a path. Only the fellows and the scholars are allowed here; the gravel is for me." (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). However, she thought that she had not lost just a “little fish", not a very important idea. In addition, her train of thought is disrupted again by the sight of a tailless cat, that looked odd and out of place. She says that to show what it feels like to be a woman writer. She suggests that all women, even the ones who were ambitious and had a literary talent were unable to achieve their goals because they did not have the opportunity to engage in sustained work and thought. Woolf explores the juxtaposition of male and female education. She visits representative colleges and discovers that the education that men receive is wealthy in contrast with the poor education that women get. The places that men live have private rooms but women have to share tight quarters. The colleges in which men study have well-stocked libraries but women’s colleges have just a few classrooms. Male students feast but female students nip. Woolf observes, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” (SparkNotes Editors, 2012). Woolf states that this difference is rather based on tradition. For many centuries, women have legally and economically been bound to their husbands and were not able to possess wealth. Property

was entailed through the male line. In addition, the education that they received was in low regard by society. Woolf praises and honors the founders of the college founders because they make these efforts despite the social customs of that period. Woolf argues that once a talented woman receive the same education and opportunities as her male counterpart, she is capable of producing work of the same quality. So, women’s work should not be compared with man’s work because men have inherently endowed all the basic necessities for writing. In contrast to men women have to struggle and strive for these necessities, such as money, space and time in order to be able to write. Woolf argues that once a talented woman receives the same opportunities as well as education with her male counterparts, she is capable of producing work of the same quality. Woolf suggests that there is not a biological reason for men being better authors than women, even though being a female seems to stifle creativity. Woolf says that a woman's "life conflicts with something that is not life". (Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own).This suggests that the duties that women had, the cultural expectations of society, as well as their role as wives and mothers stifled their creativity and in particular the writing of fiction. Women got distracted by these circumstances and could not write fiction. Even if they managed to write anyway, "she will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters". ( Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own ). Woolf suggests that this woman will be an ineffective writer. Woolf blames the patriarchal culture because the freedom of women writing is "some infringement of [man's] power to believe in himself". (Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own ). Woolf suggests that women must fight patriarchy in order to attain some degree of independence and androgyny of the mind. Woolf suggests that a measure of androgyny is necessary for fiction to be artfully done. Through androgyny women will attain the same freedom that men inherently have attained to express themselves. Woolf says that "The androgynous mind is resonant and porous it transmits emotion without impediment; it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided". (Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own ). This suggests that a balance between the female traits of emotionalism, sensitivity and the male traits of productivity would be the ideal

creative mind. It is essential to note that the female mind can be resonant and porous only when undivided. So, a woman will be able to write well only when she will have the same freedom of expression as a man and will not be forced to choose between her art and society’s expectations for her. Woolf also believes that women as writers must maintain their individuality. A writer must retain his own personality and not simply imitate his predecessors. Women should find and develop their own writing style. Woolf says that "Books continue each other in spite of our habit of judging them separately". (Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own). This means that the books that women create consist literary tradition for other women, something to make them feel more secure, to fall back on, something to support them. Thus, mimicry up to one point is natural and impossible to avoid. Another point that Woolf makes is that women do not write in the same way as men. She says that "it would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men". (Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own). This means that women write differently than men but it that is not necessarily a bad thing, as it does not imply that men’s writings are better than women’s writings. Another theme that Woolf touches is that patriarchal society treats women unequally. The essay shows how a talented woman can be undervalued, subsided, marginalized, sidelined and finally can be driven into madness. It is implied that female creativity is madness and conduces to death. Woolf suggests that “any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly gone have gone crazy, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at.” (1929, p. 1343). Women felt that they did not have the right to be authors. They felt as if they were intruders. The phrase “Publicity in women is detestable” suggests that society have convinced women that it is a rare quality to be talked about and that there is great power to the pen. (Woolf, 1929, p.1344). Women opted to live in the shadows and remain anonymous not because it was their choice but because of the way that the patriarchal society viewed them. They were instructed to remain silent and hide their creativity. The narrator creates a tragic figure, a woman named Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary twin sister of William Shakespeare to show how society discriminates against women and to show that

talented women would not be as successful as equally talented men because of their gender. Let’s take the imaginary approach that she was equally talented as her brother. She had great imagination and she was adventurous. She wanted to explore the world. However, she was not sent to school and stayed at home. So, she did not have the chance to get educated. Her talent would be undermined and underestimated not only by society but as well from her own family, instead of acknowledged and encouraged. When she tried to read a book, her parents would tell her in a sharp tone but kindly to “mend the stockings or mind the stew or moon about books and papers”. (Woolf, 1929, p. 1342). However, Judith commits to writing at a young age. However, she is ashamed of writing, writes in secret, hides her writing or sets it on fire. Her father loved her and forced her to get married because he did not want her to shame the family. When she refuses to get married her father beats her up. After this she runs away, driven by "the force of her own gift alone." (Woolf, 1929, p. 1342). She wants to get involved with acting, but she gets rejected and ridiculed. She finally falls pregnant by a theater-managera and eventually commits suicide. So that would probably be the life of a woman with Shakespeare's genius at that time. Woolf says that "it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare's day should have had Shakespeare's genius - or no more than the first germ of genius, and certainly not the kind that would ever have translated itself into brilliant writing. " ( 1929, p. 1343). Social class is a limitation of art because a genius cannot be born among “labouring, uneducated, servile people," (Woolf, 1929, 1344). So, Woolf describes the difficulties of being a writer and observes the obstacles that women have to face in order to be genius writers, such as the indifference of most of the world and the various forms of discouragement. In conclusion, with the statement “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” Woolf touches upon one of the most important assertions of feminist literary criticisms. This assertion was revolutionary for its time, even though it is historically true. The argument that women produce inferior works of literature counteracts with the circumstances in which the women produce the works. Unlike their creative men counterparts, women were deprived of rooms of their own and financial freedom because they were bound to their husbands. As a result, they could not produce creative works, not because they were not creative enough but because of the materialistic circumstances of being a woman.

Woolf believes that women will remain second-class citizens and their literary works will not be valued until the inequalities that they faced were rectified. The position of women will change gradually as the social conditions change. It is clear that throughout her lecture Woolf does not just want to express her own opinions and views. She tries to change the fate of the next generation of women by providing them literary tradition, space and financial freedom.

List of references

A Room of One's Own. Available at: http://www.litcharts.com/lit/a-room-of-one-s-own/chapter-1

A Room of One's Own Summary. Available at: http://www.gradesaver.com/a-room-of-ones-own

FemLit: Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Available at: http://persephonemagazine.com/2011/01/femlit-virginia-woolfsa-room-of-ones-own/

Gilbert,S. Gubar, S. (1996) Literature by women: the traditions in women. Second edition. London. W.W. Norton & Co.

Kronenberger., L. (1929). Virginia Woolf Discusses Women and Fiction. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/woolfroom.html

Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008) A Room of One's Own Analysis. Available at: http://www.shmoop.com/room-of-ones-own/literarydevices.html

SparkNotes Editors. (2012) SparkNote on A Room of One’s Own. Available at: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/roomofonesown/

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Available at: http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=26830

Woolf, V. A Room of One's Own. Available at: http://www.enotes.com/topics/room-ones-own/themes...