Have I been schooled by a sassy, angsty and totally awesome writing mentor? Yes.
Do I feel shame and seen and heard at the same time? Yes.

Do I feel like grinding my teeth with regret about not reading this book earlier? Well I've only got about 4 healthy teeth left so you tell me.

But this is a book that I would not have understood earlier.
This is not a book about privacy and being on your own to write.

This is a book about women's voices and why is the same thing 100x tougher for them than it is for men.

This is a book about acknowledging lack of and presence of privilege and going about work nevertheless. Fighting for your stories, your voices to be heard.

Did this book alter my reality and perception on "classic" literature that I always want to read but can't get to and now when I won't look at them with the eyes of a person who hasn't read A Room of One's Own.

The things I've learnt and read are difficult to unsee, because how harshly true they are.

They roused old suppressed anger and made sure I knew that I was justified to feel it, and not a anger-maniac with issues as the men would have us believe.

This is a book about female writers who tried but never earned the respect as their male counterparts, and what exactly was holding them behind. Half were caged in their own brain while some could never leave the shackles of whatever they were taught.

This is a book that I will constantly need to re-read, perhaps everyday or whenever I read any damn piece of fiction because this book is an encyclopedia and self-help and writing guide and social commentary all in one.

F

In some ways, A Room of One's Own is outmoded. The feminist movement has come a long way since getting women the right to have their voices heard in the political arena.

However, it surprises me, how relevant many of Woolf's points remain relevant. Men are still writing disparagingly about women. They don't come right out and say they're inferior, but the inference that they don't stack up to men, that they exist to look pretty, that their only relevance is a contrast to or companion for men, is there almost everywhere you look.

One of Woolf's ideas, that men write about women only in relation to men, has translated into something called Bechdel's Law. A movie passes Bechdel's Law only if two women converse about something other than men. I've been silently submitting movies to this law for almost the last decade, and have seen a total of 5. I'm not going out of my way to avoid female-friendly movies! Out of the hundreds of movies I've seen, FIVE pass the test? Hmm. Woolf might have something there.

But where she loses the point is when she softens it at the end. No one, she says, should write with gender in mind. Neither men nor women. Men because it makes them all defensive about being better (and I liked her analogy of women being better), and women because they feel like they need to prove something.

I dislike that conclusion because it reflects the view that a writer must be a blank slate, writing about everyman in an attempt to be objective. I hate objective in my fiction. I want to hear a writer's voice, loud and clear, and have protagonists and antagonists that give me a little insight into who wrote the thing.

Another complaint is that Woolf is writing from privilege. She knows it, and admits it. Inheriting 500 pounds a year gives her the independence to look at these kind of things, and to write about whatever she wants, with none of the traditional hindrances.

In denying the future possibility of a poor, public-educated person hammering out a few hundred words a day and producing a masterpiece, Woolf is choking the very life out of reading. "Write what you know," and all that. Do we really want to only read what middle- to upper-class white, Harvard-educated people have to say about the world? Only their experiences?

I sure as hell don't.

I suppose Woolf can be forgiven somewhat for her perspective; she didn't see the possibility because, as she cites, it was so rare. Despite her praising Shakespeare to high heavens, it doesn't even seem to occur to her that genius can come from humble beginnings. Granted, a decent education does help.

I would recommend this book to pretty much any perceptive reader. I would ask, while you're reading, that you think about what Woolf is saying, and whether it has anything to do with the perception of sub-genres, especially ones that appeal to women. Are things completely fair yet? Or is there, as during Woolf's time, a backlash against the headway feminism has brought, pushing back against the progress women have earned?

Consider it, at least.

read it

Cette autrices je ne peux la lire qu'à voix haute, si je lis silencieusement ses phrases je vais trop vite, je me perds. Son rythme ne correspond pas au mien.
Sinon l'essai en soi a déjà été trop cité, il y a plein de petites choses avec lesquelles je suis en désaccord mais c'est quand même hyper pertinent pour 1919 !

Aún después de todos los años que han transcurrido después de escrito este ensayo, resulta imposible no sentirse indignada por la pobre visión del hombre sobre la mujer en el pasado, su vigencia, aunque en un grado menor, aún se puede observar y la lleva a una a preguntarse si alguna vez llegaremos los hombres y las mujeres en algún tipo de respeto ecuánime con respecto a nuestras diferencias.