It has only taken me twenty-two (nearly twenty-three) years to finally read A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. For about five of those years I couldn’t read, and for another eight of those years (at least) I wouldn’t have understood the book even if I had read it. But, what’s my excuse for the last eight or so years? Honestly, A Room of One’s Own never crossed my mind… Until it finally did, and now I’m very glad to have read it.
This isn’t going to be a review where I excessively praise the book and tell you all it’s a life-changing affair. It’s not, and very few books are, so be wary of people who tell you that. It is, however, a very short book that examines women and fiction in a way that is accessible to most people. For that, I think everyone should read it.
The book begins slowly with Woolf detailing the start of her thought process about women and fiction. She had been asked to write on this topic, and the entire book is written as if we’re going through her musings with her rather than receiving a scripted explanation. She eventually gets around to examining things, but not before describing in lush detail her entire lunch spread while dining at Oxford. In the book, she says she does this because authors always describe a person or a conversation at a gathering, but never what people are actually eating. I had to laugh here because this book was written in 1928, well before either The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, or any of George R. R. Martin’s works had been published. I doubt she would’ve held the same stance a decade later after reading in full detail about a hobbit’s ten course meal.
From there, she spends a few pages talking about how old poetry is better than new poetry with the caveat that there is always a higher appreciation for things we no longer have. I’ve put it pretty simplistically here, but that’s the gist of it. After twenty-four pages, the entire first chapter, she starts to discuss women and fiction. The earlier chapter sets the tone of the novel as meandering and explorational, but you could start reading at the second chapter and not have missed anything integral to her analysis. I’m not recommending you do that, but if you did, I could look the other way.
Starting at the second chapter, we have the real meat of the book.
Woolf analyzes women in literature through a historical lens, wondering what women were doing at each time period of great writing. The entire book is her working the problem of, “What do women need to write?”, but the question she asks time and time again, is “Why weren’t women writing?” Her jump through history explains why women weren’t writing, and why they were able to start when they finally did. Here we learn her solution for what women need to write fiction and write it well, though its more of a criteria than a solution.
Spoiler: her criteria is that in order to write, a woman needs a room of her own (whoa) and (in Woolf’s time) 500 pounds per year. Essentially, we need space to breath and our own income. You know, those things men have always had. As Woolf traces the origin of women in writing fiction, she shows how this is the reason it took women much longer to become prominent writers.
It wasn’t a lack of ambition, but rather that we were too busy being traded through marriage like commodities. In the time of the great poets, there were a few female poets, but they were the richest of rich women and their poems were treated as a novelty rather than great works of art. This pattern of only rich women being writers, and their works being talked of in solely in jest, continues for over a century. Woolf does a splendid job illustrating her point here, so I won’t go any further, but it gives one a lot to think about.
She also discusses women in fiction as written by men. This was one of the more interesting sections to me and is where one of my favorite quotes came from. At one point she says, “why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?” It gave me a chuckle.
The way women were painted in fiction in the past was a direct result of the fact it was only men writing that fiction. There was no true understanding to be gleaned until women were able to finally write for and about themselves. This changed women in fiction forever, and Woolf covers this topic quite well in her book as it was a gradual change that she explores… gradually.
Since 1928, things have changed even more. Anyone can become an author these days (you know, mostly), and characters in novels themselves are more diverse than ever. Woolf’s book is a little dated, and a little rambling, but it’s a really great introduction into how fiction shaped the idea of women and how women shaped the idea of fiction right back.
The copy I checked out from the library was only 114 pages, less if you skip the first chapter (not that I’m saying you should). It is also free on the internet. Go read it.
The Lit Wiz