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A review by nostalgia_reader
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
4.0
Rambly, disorganized thoughts below. I probably will never be able to write a succinct, organized review of this without it being the length of a master's thesis.
I've never annotated and picked apart a non-school read this much. Maybe that was a bad thing, as I think I focused too literally on some sections where sarcasm/satire was strong. This literal reading made me disagree with many of Woolf's suggestions about writing after Chapter 3, but still agree with her overall message. Although what that overall message was I'm still uncertain about after that last line. "...[T]hat so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile." This is her conclusion, after 114 pages saying that women can really only truly become writers once they have their own space and receive some sort of reliable income. Sarcasm or not, the underlying argument is class-based--women who are middle-class or higher will have more opportunities to get this room and money of their own than lower-class women. She also sort of contradicts herself again in the final chapter by saying "So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters" after heavily alluding in prior chapters that writing is near impossible for women and when they do write, it should really only be novels because all other forms have been set in stone by men. Woolf also takes strong issue with style changes--of COURSE someone writing in the 1890s/early 1900s is going to have different sentence structure and story organization than Jane Austen's 1700s style.
Needless to say, I got very strong mixed messages throughout the second half of this book. The first half, particularly Chapter 2 (many variations of "YAAAASS" & "SLAAAAY" appeared in my marginal notes here), was much more enjoyable. This may have been because these were the chapters I had read for a literature class last year, but they were also the parts where I agreed with her points the most, without finding excessive contradictions.
Even though I had issues with her argument as the book wore on, I still highly enjoyed reading it and seeing her point of view on the issue. I honestly wouldn't recommend it as much to writers as I would to women's/gender studies scholars and literature scholars who are interested in how gender and class affect creativity and writing.
I've never annotated and picked apart a non-school read this much. Maybe that was a bad thing, as I think I focused too literally on some sections where sarcasm/satire was strong. This literal reading made me disagree with many of Woolf's suggestions about writing after Chapter 3, but still agree with her overall message. Although what that overall message was I'm still uncertain about after that last line. "...[T]hat so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile." This is her conclusion, after 114 pages saying that women can really only truly become writers once they have their own space and receive some sort of reliable income. Sarcasm or not, the underlying argument is class-based--women who are middle-class or higher will have more opportunities to get this room and money of their own than lower-class women. She also sort of contradicts herself again in the final chapter by saying "So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters" after heavily alluding in prior chapters that writing is near impossible for women and when they do write, it should really only be novels because all other forms have been set in stone by men. Woolf also takes strong issue with style changes--of COURSE someone writing in the 1890s/early 1900s is going to have different sentence structure and story organization than Jane Austen's 1700s style.
Needless to say, I got very strong mixed messages throughout the second half of this book. The first half, particularly Chapter 2 (many variations of "YAAAASS" & "SLAAAAY" appeared in my marginal notes here), was much more enjoyable. This may have been because these were the chapters I had read for a literature class last year, but they were also the parts where I agreed with her points the most, without finding excessive contradictions.
Even though I had issues with her argument as the book wore on, I still highly enjoyed reading it and seeing her point of view on the issue. I honestly wouldn't recommend it as much to writers as I would to women's/gender studies scholars and literature scholars who are interested in how gender and class affect creativity and writing.