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A review by shorshewitch
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
5.0
I want to stand up and shout out to Ms. Woolfe, and thank her for writing this. It is not an easy task, to talk about centuries of women and their conditions and make such a deep impact in just about 1.5 hours. The book took me longer than usual because I had to absorb every word of it to the fullest. I read certain passages multiple times to ensure I get them in my head and make them stay there.
Woolfe has written about "Women and fiction" - and in this essay she has explored why Austen and Brontë, despite having written tomes of their own, couldn't write a "War and Peace", what conditions they may have had when they wrote what they did, what they could've done had the necessary opportunities been provided to them. Woolfe thinks and emphasizes on the value of a few bucks a year and a room of one's own and why it is significant for the creative juices to flow. Although the entire essay is a voice of despair, Woolfe has ended it on a very hopeful, optimistic note. Copying the pasaage below:
"I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young – alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so – I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals – 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 in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogy, 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 is 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. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without ththat preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while."
Woolfe has written about "Women and fiction" - and in this essay she has explored why Austen and Brontë, despite having written tomes of their own, couldn't write a "War and Peace", what conditions they may have had when they wrote what they did, what they could've done had the necessary opportunities been provided to them. Woolfe thinks and emphasizes on the value of a few bucks a year and a room of one's own and why it is significant for the creative juices to flow. Although the entire essay is a voice of despair, Woolfe has ended it on a very hopeful, optimistic note. Copying the pasaage below:
"I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young – alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so – I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals – 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 in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogy, 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 is 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. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without ththat preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while."