Virginia Woolf. Rory is seen reading Woolf’s monumental text
A Room of One’s Own in episode five while waiting for her bus to Chilton. Just some light reading, huh? Virginia Woolf is commonly associated with helping inspire feminism and is
known for her novels and essays related to the topic. While she is known for
being a feminist, she is also known for being a prominent writer of the
modernist movement.
I first
read Virginia Woolf in college. I heard about her in high school and read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (which
is not about Virginia Woolf at all despite her name being in the title), but never read her during that time. During
my sophomore year, I read her novel To
the Lighthouse in a modernist literature class. Honestly, it did not
resonate with me; it felt like I was in a fog while reading it. This might have
something to do with the whole stream of consciousness thing. Anywho…I read A Room of One’s Own a year later in my Women
in Modern Western History class. I remembered enough of the text to not reread
it again.
When I hear
the name Virginia Woolf, I recall how my mentor teacher in student-teaching had
an entire unit she dubbed the “crazy chicks unit” which included texts by
Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. While the title may
be insensitive, it did grab our students’ attention and that is something that
can be difficult to do in a high school English classroom. It’s a shame that
Virginia Woolf is often thought of as crazy because she had a mental illness
that she didn’t know how to deal with. This eventually caused her to kill
herself by putting rocks in her dress and drowning herself in a river. It makes
you wonder how people would view her works if her mental illness was not in the
back of everyone’s mind.
A Room of One’s Own is a nonfiction text
that is based on several lectures Woolf delivered across different colleges.
Woolf claims in this text that “a woman must have money and a room of her own
if she is to write fiction.” The entirety of this text builds upon this point. She
questions if there could be a female Shakespeare if women were given the same
opportunities as men. This is a valid point. Imagine the caliber of stories,
plays, poems, and essays we could have in world literature if more women were
given the opportunities to develop their talents. So many talented female
writers faded into oblivion because they were never taught to read and write.
I agree
with Woolf’s claim. I need my own space to be able to write. When other people
are around or aware that I am working on writing something, I freeze up. It is
almost too much pressure. I need my alone time to write because writing is a
personal process. Even though I share what I write, the process of writing it
is something that I need to do on my own. It is a commitment I have with
myself. I am able to have this commitment with myself because I have money to
support myself and my basic needs. If I did not have means to support myself, I would
not have time to write and therefore it would not be a priority.
Not
every woman has this opportunity today. It is sad that equality is something we
are still fighting for. Women may have their own rooms today, but money is not
a guarantee. In many fields, women are paid less than their male counterparts.
This has definitely been put in the forefront lately due to the Time’s Up
movement in Hollywood and the sexual harassment claims following suit. It is
very clear that many women have dealt with some sort of sexual harassment in
their life or have been treated in a certain manner because of their gender. We
still have a lot to do to make Virginia Woolf pleased, but at least we have our own rooms. Images
- Author Portrait: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/George_Charles_Beresford_-_Virginia_Woolf_in_1902_-_Restoration.jpg- Book Cover: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51oa5lhpGvL._SX338_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
- Vintage Book Cover:https://onehundredpages.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/111.jpg?w=637&h=989
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