a room of one's own by virginia woolf (1929)

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 is based on two papers read to the Arts Society and at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton in October 1928.

Woolf, while seemingly in the midst of a long perambulation, discusses women; fiction; why if Shakespeare had a sister, she would not make it as her brother had; and the reasons women have yet to achieve the status of men in literature. She also makes a comparison among the published women during her time which included Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Elliot. She clearly expresses her preference for Austen and explains why Charlotte Bronte, for instance, has not been able to achieve the degree of fluidity in Austen’s books.

Woolf was optimistic that women would ultimately stand at par with men in the literary world. She said that “if we live another century or so 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 not always in their 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 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”.
She gently admonishes that women cannot invent excuses for not being able to produce works at par with men pointing out that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1866; that after the year 1880, a married woman was allowed by law to possess her own property; and that in 1919, she was given the right to vote. She adds that “When you reflect upon these immense privileges and the length of time during which they have been enjoyed, and that fact that there must be at this moment some two thousand women capable of earning five hundred year in one way or another, you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity, training, encouragement, leisure, and money no longer holds good.”

And what should women write about? Woolf says that “you would write books of history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By doing so you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much better standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy.”