“Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women?” asked Mary Seton, the fictional figure in Virginia Woolf’s feminist manifesto A Room of One’s Own. Such a statement made me laugh aloud from my seat on a bench on Bay State Road when I read it because I wholeheartedly agree. Though it’s over 100 years old, this statement rings true today, as do many of Woolf’s feminist agendas in this work.
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 and resided in England until her death in 1941. She was a prominent author in the modernist movement, frequently playing with literary devices and styles to create something entirely unique. Her two most famous novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1924) and To the Lighthouse (1927), feature free, indirect discourse mixed with a stream-of-consciousness point of view. It’s a confusing yet entirely fruitful combination. Both inside and outside of her writing career, Woolf was a strong advocate for change, especially for women’s rights and against traditional mental health practices.
A Room of One’s Own began as a series of lectures that Woolf delivered to female students at the University of Cambridge in 1928 before she adapted it into a feature-length essay published in 1929. In the novel, Woolf explores the ideas of women in fiction, discussing issues with class, race, and gender that prevented women from partaking in fiction. In perhaps the most famous example from this essay, she imagines that Shakespeare had a sister who was his true writer, but could not take credit for her work due to her gender. Overall, the book serves as a general reflection about the history of female fiction authors, but ends with hope for the female writers of the future.
As both a feminist and an avid reader of literary fiction, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own was an immediate 5-star read. I was personally introduced to the world of Woolf in my English literature class last year with her extremely popular novel, Mrs. Dalloway. When reading Mrs. Dalloway, I was blown away by the intentionality behind Woolf’s every word, as well as her ability to transport readers from one character’s mind to the next in such meaningful ways.
While A Room of One’s Own has less of a focus on the characters than Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style is still phenomenal. I thoroughly enjoyed her commentary on the nature of women in fiction, as her tone and overall conclusions resonate scarily well in today’s context. She discusses how most male authors (and men in general) feel that they are above women, both academically and in real life, as she is shoved by a man on a college trail.
While she began with her feelings about the egos of men, everything in this novel ultimately comes down to women and how they breathe a certain life into fiction that no other gender can replicate. It truly is a beautiful message and a testament to the many women of the past (including Woolf) who blazed the path for female writers around the world today.
Beginning a Virginia Woolf work, especially if you’re not a fan of literary fiction, can seem like an incredibly daunting task.
But I assure you that any of her works, especially A Room of One’s Own, is more than worth your time.
Want to keep up with HCBU? Make sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, check out our Pinterest board, watch us on TikTok, and read our latest Tweets!