(Virginia Woolf) Have you ever wondered what makes us who we are? Each of us is shaped by the societal, cultural and gendered roles and expectations we navigate in our lifetime. The same is true for the truly revolutionary Virginia Woolf, whose thoughts and ideas about women’s writing and liberation left an indelible mark on the feminist movements that were to come thereafter. Today, on her birthday, we dwell on how her extraordinary essay A Room of One’s Own, born out of lectures, came into being and how it continues to be a seminal text in the present times. (Virginia Woolf)
Virginia Woolf was born on 25th January 1882 as Virginia Stephen to wealthy and well-connected parents, Sir Leslie Stephen, a famous critic, and Julia Stephen, a beautiful woman. She was the seventh child and was home-schooled for most of her life. Her mother’s death when she was quite young, her brother’s death and her father’s death when she was 22 cast a gloom over her, and she was prone to episodes of mental breakdowns after that. She was discriminated when it came to her own education, and this left a lasting impression on her. However, she made the best possible use of her circumstance and mingled with the Cambridge intellectuals and scholars that her brothers mixed with. (Virginia Woolf)
Only a life of financial security can bring about the freedom of choice and intellectual expression. However, she does not pin blame on a certain group for the existing state of affairs, rather points the finger at the social system around which the roles of men and women were charted.
Virginia Woolf, along with her brothers and friends, formed the famous Bloomsbury Group that discussed the art, politics and literature of the times. Virginia married Leonard Woolf, one of the members of the group, in 1912. The political and sexual freedom of this group had a considerable influence on Virginia’s own life and works.
Virginia started writing and soon came out with a slew of sensational novels such as The Voyage Out (1915), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1929) and The Waves (1931). In her writings, she revolutionised the modernist form and mastered the art of using the stream of consciousness technique for which she is widely venerated today. However, it is a series of lectures, compiled into a book of essays called A Room of One’s Own (1928), that has left its everlasting mark on her readers. (Virginia Woolf)
So, what brought about this collection of essays, one may ask. Let us look at some of the factors that birthed this remarkable book. Historically, the lectures that shaped this book were given by Virginia at a time when the women in England were finally voting rights after decades of struggle in the Suffragette movement.
Speaking to her audience, Woolf passionately and rather poignantly spoke about the need for financial independence to a group of women scholars on the subject of Women and Fiction Writing. She clearly indicated the need for the assertion of the female identity through monetary independence and highlighting the need for space, aside from the domestic, societal and cultural expectations that a woman is expected to conform to. This is something that holds true even to this day. (Virginia Wolf)
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The essay focusses on a single day at a college in the fictional university campus of Oxbridge where she is shut out from certain sections of the premises due to restrictions. She highlights the difference in conduct, attitudes and meals offered at the men’s and women’s colleges and cannot help but wonder that a woman’s “sensibility had been educated for centuries of the common sitting room.
People’s feelings were impressed on her; personal relations were always before her eyes.” Looking back on the literary legacy of women writers, Woolf asserts that there is hardly any record of the women writers, their life, choices and proclivities, neither are women represented truly and realistically by the men writers who were her predecessors. (Virginia Woolf)
She focusses on the importance of women writing women faithfully. She brings to the fore Shakespeare’s fictional sister, Judith, a woman with surprising wit perhaps and a ready penchance for writing, whose voice had perhaps been subdued, her being suffocated, finally driven to suicide because her dreams were crushed by the way the society is aligned along gendered norms. Woolf acknowledges the greater freedom women have now and insists on making full use of it if one is to forge a literary career, or any career for that matter. (Virginia Woolf)
This fine work is a rousing call for the financial independence for women. Only a life of financial security can bring about the freedom of choice and intellectual expression. However, she does not pin blame on a certain group for the existing state of affairs, rather points the finger at the social system around which the roles of men and women were charted. Her drive towards equality and sharing of roles and responsibilities is something which gave a lot of clarity to the feminist thinkers after her and shaped the second wave of feminism.
To this end, we owe Woolf a huge debt of gratitude, because she clearly espouses a simple solution to most social and creative inequities, something that helped later feminists and thinkers to observe the world around them and propound thoughts with clarity and sharpness, creating a lasting literary legacy. (Virginia Woolf)
“All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.”