Much as it’s hard to critique a William Shakespeare or a Mark Twain, it’s hard to critique Virginia Woolf. She pioneered women’s literature in the early twentieth century and helped lay its foundation for an incredibly successful, bustling marketplace in today’s world. Despite nagging misogyny, women writers receive deserved respect because of Woolf’s proposals to let women’s genius work. So in one sense, this book offers a distilled, timeless essay worthy of historical study for decades, if not centuries, to come.
In another sense, this work needs urgent study for today’s politics. Will women’s social progress continue? Will women’s minds continue to bear fruit for us all? Or will we indulge in circular arguments about their social roles – or even their inherent capabilities? Machismo culture is still rampant in some circles, and in today’s newspapers, those circles seem to be expanding, not retracting.
In this six-chapter essay, Woolf imagines what would have happened if Shakespeare had an equally brilliant sister. Would her brilliance had found its audience? Probably not due to social impediments. Wolf observed that such obstacles were decreasing the decades before 1929. Can women find meaningful tasks, which Woolf defines as a steady income and a “room of one’s own…” with a lock on it? She answered a resounding yes, and subsequent decades support her assertion.
In the century-or-so since Woolf’s essay, most Western societies have invested, albeit imperfectly, in women’s independence. We all have benefitted substantially from their social contributions that extend beyond caretaking and housekeeping. Yet women and men still waste too much energy fighting each other about their own social places, whether a domestic life is superior or inferior to a working life. Recently, many have rediscovered Woolf’s allusion to Coleridge’s “androgynous mind” in the form of gender fluidity. Perhaps reproductive roles isn’t as all-encompassing as some make them out to be; perhaps the reality of our lives is a lot more interesting than mere sex.
Therefore, this book is at once both a historical capsule and a living classic. As a man, it helped me further understand women’s history and the choices women in my life still face. As we approach its 100th anniversary, I humbly suggest it should still be read and pondered. Woolf broke a lot of barriers and earned a prominent place in history. Less obviously but more acutely, she can keep earning that place if we take the time to read this short work.
A Room of One’s Own
By Virginia Woolf
Copyright (c) 1929, 1957
Mariner Classics
ISBN13 9780156787338
Page Count: 114
Genre: Feminism, Literary History
www.amazon.com