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Summary: Women and literature
Review: Her argument goes: "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things." The intellectual freedom of writing books, good books, depends on a person's ability to acquire income and to have their own space, undisturbed and unashamed. Virginia Woolf suggests that she is an amateur in this matter, and, due to her lack of formal education, finds it difficult to properly research the topic. However, she proves herself competent in making a coherent argument that is convincing, though her conclusions are no longer very surprising. It is difficult to argue against her, to say that women, who have had substantially lower incomes than men and have faced many stigmas and prejudices are not disadvantaged in producing works of literature or art or in making intellectual contributions.As I said, her argument is no longer new. Most people probably do not have to read this book in order to agree with her main thesis. But she does make a few interesting points about the role of women in literature and what the effects of increased freedom for women might be. For the method of the argument alone this book has value: "...one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold." She does not ask you to agree, but only to understand why she thinks what she does.
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Summary: "Virginia" a wonderfull writer
Review: I read A Room Of One's Own three years ago and I still remember it such a great book, it's interesting and helped me to reconogize on me a hidded writer woman. This book make me free and I really fell in love of it. I agree, a woman needs a room and the necesary privacy to dream.
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Summary: A Room of One's Own--What a Girl REALLY Shouldn't Go Without
Review: I was terrified when I found out that I had to read this book for my women's studies class because my mom told me that Virginia Woolf was like James Joyce stylistically. When I actually started reading A Room of Ones Own, I was pleasantly surprised by the intimacy and smoothness of Woolf's writing, and her clear logic compared with the rigidity of "the old boy's club." She offers a simple, well thought-out argument for why a woman needs financial independence and a room of her own in order to achieve what men can achieve artistically and academically. The depressing part about A Room of Ones Own is a lot of what she writes about the status of women today compared to that of men is still true.
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Summary: This is a requirement for any modern, intellectual woman.
Review: In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf says that in order for a woman to write fiction, she must have money and a room of her own; I believe that to be, or to understand, an intellectual woman in this century, one must read this book. Unlike a sad number of feminist writers, Woolf does not make the mistake of tearing down the accomplishments of men in order to make room for those of women. Indeed, she speaks eloquently against just that danger throughout "A Room of One's Own," which is partly what allows it to stand not only as a feminist classic, but also as a classic piece of both literature and literary criticism. It is not often that an essay reaches creative heights great enough to establish itself equally as a work of art and an intellectual effort, but Woolf has done it here. She does not waste her words or her energy on destructive, angry prattling. She writes with a depth of humanity that challenges us to be better writers, better thinkers, and better people.
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Summary: This is a requirement for any modern, intellectual woman.
Review: In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf says that in order for a woman to write fiction, she must have money and a room of her own; I believe that to be, or to understand, an intellectual woman in this century, one must read this book. Unlike a sad number of feminist writers, Woolf does not make the mistake of tearing down the accomplishments of men in order to make room for those of women. Indeed, she speaks eloquently against just that danger throughout "A Room of One's Own," which is partly what allows it to stand not only as a feminist classic, but also as a classic piece of both literature and literary criticism. It is not often that an essay reaches creative heights great enough to establish itself equally as a work of art and an intellectual effort, but Woolf has done it here. She does not waste her words or her energy on destructive, angry prattling. She writes with a depth of humanity that challenges us to be better writers, better thinkers, and better people.
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Summary: An Extraordinary Essay on Women and Fiction
Review: In 1928, Virginia Woolf was asked to speak on the topic of "women and fiction". The result, based upon two papers she delivered to literary societies at Newnham and Girton in October of that year, was "A Room of One's Own", an extended essay on women as both writers of fiction and as characters in fiction. And, while Woolf suggests that, "when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth," her essay is, in fact, an extraordinarily even-handed, thoughtful and perceptive reflection on the topic. Woolf begins with a simple and enigmatic opinion: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unresolved." From this spare beginning, Woolf deftly explores the difference between how women had been portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived in the world, during the preceding centuries. "A very queer, composite being emerges. Imaginatively, she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was a slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger." The source of dissonance between how women were portrayed in fiction, and how they actually lived, was the fact that most fiction prior to the nineteenth century was written by men. As Woolf astutely points out, "[i]t 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." Woolf's observation is no feminist polemic; it is, rather, an incisive comment on how fiction was impoverished when it was written only by men. Even when fiction was written by women, it was powerfully influenced by patriarchal notions of virtue and the proper role of women. Thus, Woolf suggests there could be no female Shakespeare in sixteenth century England because no women would be tolerated who lived in the real world like the Bard. "No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational-for chastity may be a fetish invented by societies for unknown reasons-but were none the less inevitable." Indeed, this "relic of the sense of chastity" dictated that more daring female authors-George Eliot, George Sand, Currer Bell-maintain anonymity as late as the nineteenth century. When female writers did find a "room of their own," they were still limited by social and cultural imperatives. Thus, the first of the great women novelists-Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot-wrote largely from the drawing room, not from the experiences of the larger world-the very conditions of their writing life being as cramped as the their restricted lives. As Woolf notes, in commenting on Charlotte Bronte, "[s]he knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted, they were withheld." Ultimately, Woolf suggests that the "true" nature of women will only be approached in fiction when women are sufficiently independent-not only in a financial sense, but in the sense of being freed from societal and cultural restraints-to explore the quotidian, the everyday lives of people in the world. This is the aspect of the fictional world that, in Woolf's view, was absent from the male-dominated novel prior to the nineteenth century. Woolf further suggests that the "true" nature of fiction is expressed only through those writers who can transcend their narrow sexual roles-become "man-womanly" or "woman-manly"-so as to convey the fullness of the real world. As Woolf notes, "Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all of its faculties." Based on this criterion, Woolf promulgates her own canon of English male writers, a canon which includes Shakespeare, Keats, Sterne, Cowper, Lamb, Coleridge, and Proust (who "was perhaps wholly androgynous, if not perhaps a little too much of a woman"). "A Room of One's Own" is, in sum, a fascinating, thoughtful and perceptive essay on women and fiction written by one of the Twentieth century's most formidable writers and thinkers, a woman who truly succeeded in creating a room of her own in the canon of modern English literature.
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Summary: The Genius in A Room of One's Own
Review: In this book, Virginia Woolf explores the following thesis: "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom." Writing at a time when, as she herself stated in her diary, writing was not a respectable occupation for women, Woolf showed great courage in propounding this profoundly simple, pithy book. The book began as a lecture which she prepared for a girl's school. Asked to lecture on the subject of women and fiction, she determined to propound her theory that financial independence was necessary for the creation of genius. In her way of thinking, women throughout history may have had genius, but were never given the opportunity to develop it, being always dependant upon men for their social and financial standing. She urged women to earn their own living through writing; to break free of these social and financial constraints. However, in speaking out against the male-dominated intellectual scene, she did so without anger, without acrimony. Her usual good humor and simplicity, found so clearly in her diary and letters, shine throughout the book, making it invaluable not only as a social statement, but also as a precious insight into her personality. She is in turn serious, playful, mocking, and tender. A Room of One's Own is not so applicable today as it was seventy-five years ago, but it is still valuable as an historical document; as a moral boost for aspiring young women writers; and as a further insight into the character of Virginia Woolf.
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Summary: Accessible Woolf!
Review: Some of Virginia Woolf's writing is difficult for the modern reader to plough through - loooong sentences, convoluted construction, excessive naval gazing (in fictional form). But A Room of One's Own, a very long essay about feminism, independence, writing, and becoming one's own person, is actually quite readable, quite educational, and quite wonderful. The reader, at least this one, feels she's in the presence of a great mind at work as it ruminates on and on about these topics in a somewhat rambling but engaging personal reflection. Although written in 1929, the situation for women artists hasn't changed all that much, so it's far from dated.
A must-read.
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Summary: A calmly observed feminist text of wider literary value.
Review: The inoffensive feminist tone of this text should not confine it's readership to the predominantly female. It is indeed from that point of view interesting,valuable and easy reading,accessible to both male and female readers alike.But outwith the political undercurrants, the precise and poetic delicacy of the writing provides not only a pleasure for the reader but potent advice for the aspirant writer.If one needs look for further justifications as to the significance of these essays, then it could be viewed as an historical viewfinder, not of only sociological relevance, but also the evolvlution of modern literature. Buy it, read it, love it and read it again!
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Summary: What Every Woman Writer Needs....
Review: This essay taken from a lecture that Virginia Woolf gave to students in England during 1928 is an essential reading for writers and feminists alike.
During the 1920's women writing literature were still struggling for a voice without prejudice. Virginia Woolf emerged as one of the first feminist voices ready to speak out against the silenced history of women writers and historians. In this book she argues that any woman serious about writing must have 500 pounds per year and a room of her own in which to capture a few moments of silence and restore her voice back to power without the pull of all her "womanly" responsibilities. Woolf seems to believe that one of the only true literary voices, one that wrote without anger, fear, or prejudice was Shakespeare and that his works have lasted because of the extension of this idea. Woolf discusses Brönte and leans towards a woman writing with anger the seeps forth in her words and of Austen she expresses appreciation for what she must have endured in order to publish her works in a male dominated industry. Woolf clearly criticizes writer's that allow their gripes to appear in their works rather than their true talents. She appears hopeful that the future holds another Shakespeare and that inevitably it will be a woman who writes so extraordinarily this time around.
Woolf shows herself to be one of the first true feminists our society had during her lifetime. She unabashedly criticizes a society dominated and silenced by men who felt it their duty to protect women from their own fear. Her critique of professors who openly claim women to be inferior is turned towards them as men concerned instead with being superior. She insists that the enlargement of men like Napoleon and Mussolini as well as the many wars society has experienced is purely because the light that is contained within women has been allowed to be dimmed by male domination. Woolf is saddened and disgusted by the fact that history and literature represented women so poorly in the past refusing to offer a woman as being anything more than a lover to a greater man. She also indicates that the suffrage movement probably contributed towards males feeling challenged by something far inferior to their inflated superiority. Her words are quite strong for a woman of her era but also fairly futuristic in thought.
Woolf writes of many intelligent guidelines for any writer in this book. She offers a suggestion that one should write with an androgynous mind allowing both the softness of the feminine and the power of the masculine to come forth in words. A writer must not fear another's opinion but instead believe so forcefully in one's words that criticism cannot cause dishonesty of talent. And of course she is resolute in the fact that a writer needs a room of one's own to come to his or her center and in order to bring forth greatness without prejudice.
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