A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

This was published in 1929 by Hogarth Press, a publishing house that Woolf and her husband founded. It is based on a lecture Woolf gave at Cambridge University. Despite being almost one hundred years old many of the themes resonate today. Reading this book reminded me (as if I needed reminding) of how far we, as a society, have to go until women are treated as importantly as men are; until women’s ideas are regarded as valid as men’s are; until women’s work is respected as much as men’s is and rewarded accordingly. Another particularly resonant theme that struck me was the poverty of women. Woolf talks about how women are collectively so much poorer than men because they have not ‘learnt the art of making money’; or more precisely, they are practically unable to earn money because of their roles as mothers: ‘Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children—no human being could stand it’. Of course women these days in Western countries do not have thirteen children. Yet women’s low wages relative to men’s is directly connected to their roles as unpaid wives and mothers. If you take the partner out of the picture, single mothers are one of the poorest demographic groups in Australia (sorry, don’t have time to give you stats - maybe I’ll fill this in later).


Woolf’s central argument is that in order for women to write, they need a room of one’s own and an income. Because women had been deprived of these things, there were few notable women writers. Woolf’s description of the possible conditions that Jane Austen wrote under made me look at Austen’s books in a new light. I had never really thought about it, but Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice etc were probably not written in an office or ‘a room of one’s own’, at a leisurely and private pace, but in little pockets of time that Austen could steal while she sat in a drawing room with other women or family members who were chatting or sewing.

Woolf notes that female characters in novels, specifically up to Austen’s days, are depicted in relation to men. ‘I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends […] But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men’. It is true that this is no longer the case, and women characters have more depth in novels. But I still think that male characters are allowed much more autonomy than female characters. I know I’m departing somewhat from novels, but I can’t help but feel this point is particularly relevant when it comes to mainstream movies. Check the bechdel test out: Next time you go to a movie, think about a) how many female characters there are, and b) whether they are independent characters or mainly depicted in relation to the more important male characters. Here is an interesting blog entry with interesting links included about this in relation to the very popular Toy Story 3.

Anyway, back to Woolf, her parting words are those of encouragement laced with criticism. Get out there ladies: learn, and write!

Here is the link to the penguins classics page for A Room of One's Own