Virginia Woolf “A Room of One’s Own”

“A room of one’s own” is an extended essay where Virginia Woolf presents and discusses large questions related to women’s history. What the writer ponders is that “a woman must have money and a room of her own”. According to that, Virginia appeals both real (or room) and a metaphorical space. Nevertheless, what we call “metaphorical space” is the historical perspective she refers to and criticizes. In her essay, Virginia takes into consideration the historical perspective, reflecting that women have never been considered as important as men to write literature, and not only just fiction, poetry also. To Virginia the question is why there have been few high-quality woman writers. Her answer is because historically female gender has been discriminated by chauvinist society, limiting women’s lives in all senses. Indeed Woolf also addresses that one of the problem is education, because men were well educated and women were not, pointing out implicitly how inferior for that society women were in the XIX Century.


Concluding with my reflection, I can argue that when Virginia Woolf states “a woman should have money”, she is claiming that the process of writing involves on the one hand, most part of the day , and on the second hand, time to think to create literature but without interruptions. In fact, it is a way of living and if a woman works to have incomes, then, her art will be affected or interrupted. In other words, Virginia Woolf also infers the education of women needed more money.

















References:

http://www.enotes.com/room-ones