A Room Of Ones Own Virginia Woolf

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

It is essential to understand the personality that was Virginia Woolf before we move onto discuss A Room of One’s Own. Born in 1882, Virginia Woolf was the youngest daughter of Leslie Stephen, distinguished critic, biographer and philosopher, and Julia Stephen, daughter of Willam Makepeace Thackery. Although Woolf was denied formal education, she was exposed to not only a vast number of books from her father’s library, but also the company of influential writers such as Thomas Hardy and William Thackery.

A series of tragedies affected the Stephen family, and at a very young age Woolf suffered her first mental mental breakdown after the death of her mother in 1895. This incident was closely followed by the death of her stepsister, Stella Duckworth, two years down the line. She began her first diary the same year her sister died, and over the next seven years, whilst she was subjected to endless demands of sympathy and affection from her father, her resolution to become a writer established itself and grew stronger.

Leslie Stephen died of cancer on 22nd February 1904. It has been claimed that Virginia fell under the supervision of her older stepbrother George Duckworth, who bullied and sexually abused her.  She suffered another mental breakdown during the same time that she had Scarlet fever. Subsequently she attempted suicide. On her recovery, she moved to Bloomsbury with her siblings.

The Bloomsbury Group included her brother, Thoby, and a brilliant young group of Cambridge graduates. It included Lytton Starchy, Maynard Keynes, Clive Bell, E.M. Forester, Roger Fry, T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen, Vita Sackville-West and her husband Sir Harold Nicholson. Woolf was able to pursue her literary interest in this intellectually stimulating environment. However, the stability in her life was shattered again by the death of Thoby, who collapsed to typhoid in 1906.

In 1910 Virginia suffered another mental breakdown. She spent the summer in a private nursing home in Twickenham along with other patients who suffered from nervous disorders and similar symptoms. She was profusely unhappy during this period and told her sister, Vanessa Stephen, "I shall soon have to jump out of a window."

Virginia Woolf got married to Leonard Woolf, and together they found the Hograth Press in 1917, which became one of the most successful publishing houses of the time. Previously in 1914 Virginia Woolf had another severe mental breakdown. Leonard nursed her back to recovery and in 1915 her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published. According to Stanford Patrick Rosenbaum,

He had recognized her genius before their marriage, but not the extent of her mental instability. For nearly thirty years one of Leonard's chief occupations was caring for Virginia. Without his vigilant love, her books would never have been written; he was her first reader, her editor, and her publisher. Though not a sexually active marriage, theirs was one of profound and enduring affection.

In 1922, Woolf met Vita Sackville-West, and after a cautious start, the two began to have an affair. This lasted till 1927, when Sackville-west also got involved with Mary Garman, an affair that Woolf was extremely jealous of. It is believed that this affair influenced her novel, Orlando. Her nephew, Quentin Bell, later recalled Woolf’s affair thus,

"There may have been - on balance I think that there probably was - some caressing, some bedding together. But whatever may have occurred between them of this nature, I doubt very much whether it was of a kind to excite Virginia or to satisfy Vita. As far as Virginia's life is concerned the point is of no great importance; what was, to her, important was the extent to which she was emotionally involved, the degree to which she was in love. One cannot give a straight answer to such questions but, if the test of passions be blindness, then her affections were not very deeply engaged."

Virginia Woolf began to have recurring bouts of mental illness which constantly interrupted her work. The war caused her immense psychological distress. She feared that her madness would return and she would not be able to continue writing. On 28th March, 1941, Virginia wrote in a letter to Leonard,

"I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer."

Later that morning she committed suicide by drowning herself in the Ouse, near her home in Rodmell.

Virginia Woolf’s writings reveal an academic commitment to political, social and feminist principles. She was acutely aware of both, the damage as well as the absurdity of contemporary life, and her writings condemned the British patriarchal culture. Furthermore, she discovered that the emotional strain of modern life created a lot of communication gaps among people. This state of confusion is expressed in Woolf’s novels through her characters’ inability to communicate with each other. In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa tries to discover a means of communication with others, but she fails to overcome her sense of loneliness. In To the Lighthouse, though the Ramsays and their guests live together, each is a secluded soul. Woolf’s novels explored the desolation and isolation in the lives of women. She aspired to create an androgynous world in which the harmony and balance between intellect and emotion is maintained.

Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own in 1929. A work of nonfiction, this series is an important book in the history of feminism. It speaks of the need for economic independence of women and investigates the consequences of a male-dominated society.

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

A Room of One's Own is an extensive essay which is based broadly on two lectures given by Woolf at Newnham and Girton Colleges, Cambridge, in 1928. The central message that it delivers proceeds thus; 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’ She also brings to the front the differences between male and female writing. Chief among them is the fact that men had the privilege of university education while most women were denied it. She also draws attention to constant presence of women as characters in the fiction written by men and their exclusion as writers.

Woolf uses her knowledge of English, European, and Classical literature to illustrate the way in which patriarchal societies have, over the centuries, repressed and confined women's literary potential. In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf suggests that women produce so little literature because of the immense amount of discouragement and censure that female writers are made to face. She states that opposition and condemnation negatively affect the artistic mind. The genius is most sensitive to criticism. Woolf goes ahead to claim that it was close to impossible for a talented woman to write well during the sixteenth century. She said,

A highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty.

To explain why women didn’t have the access to the literary world, Woolf constructs the tale of "Shakespeare’s sister,"a sixteenth century woman born with a genius equal to that of Shakespeare’s. Judith and William represented the heads and tails of the coin.

However, rejection and discouragement from family, friends and society greatly damages her artistic mind. Since the world denies her an expression of her genius, she ultimately commits suicide. Woolf says that like,

Shakespeare’s sister, any woman born with a gift for poetry in the sixteenth century was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself.

Although the circumstances of female writers developed for the better immensely over the next 300 years, Woolf states that even in the nineteenth century a woman was not truly encouraged to be an artist. "On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted." However, Woolf draws attention to those enterprising and courageous women who did manage to overcome the obstacles in their path and succeed in writing English literature. She says,

What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking.

However, even as she praises their determination, Woolf subsequently suggests that the quality of such literature is blighted by women's evident awareness of their own inferior status in society, and the resulting feelings of outrage that this awareness creates in them.  She speaks of women writers such as Charlotte Brönte and Jane Austen. She mentions that she prefers Austen to Brönte because the former’s writings were devoid of anger. Woolf strongly asserts that it is only when a woman is able to move beyond this acute awareness of herself as 'inferior', can she can delve into the true essence of herself and make use of a mind that is free or ‘incandescent’.

In the last chapter Woolf introduces the idea that the ideal state of mind, when it is at its most creative and is able to produce the best of art, is an androgynous one. She insists that the minds of men and women have both, a masculine as well as a feminine side, and the creative process involved in producing a work of art requires the use of both sides.

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf demonstrates that money and space are fundamentally connected to the writing of fiction.  Woolf closes the essay with an appeal to her audience of women to refrain from following the pattern which saw so little bequeathed to them, and to subsequently increase the endowment for their own daughters.

MAJOR THEMES

Feminism: In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf tries to answer the question as to the reason for the scarcity of female writers. She declares that the answer is linked directly to the inferior status that is delegated to women in society. This status as an inferior deprives women of confidence, material prospects and privacy, all essential to the nourishment of an artistic mind. Woolf also reveals that gender-consciousness is an impediment to the maximum usage of a woman’s creative mind. Moreover, she extends the limitations of this impediment to the male race as well; she asserts that human beings in general need to think beyond the position their sex holds in society – only then will their minds be free for creative operations.

Woolf declares over the course of centuries men have asserted their own superiority by belittling women. As men are threatened by the thought of losing their power over the female race, they disparage women in order to glorify themselves and validate their own masculinity. As a result, women’s writings have been marked by the evident signs of their feelings of anger and fear. On the other hand, men’s writings have been marked by signs of aggression.

To challenge the patriarchal tradition that has excluded women as the makers of masterpieces, Woolf creates for women a coveted female tradition in A Room of One’s Own. In order to create an artist, she says, women should be able to create their own identity, talk about their own experiences and encourage women’s writing. She says,

Literature is open to everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are to run me off the grass. Lock up your liberties if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no blot that can set upon the freedom of my mind.

When she turns her attention to fiction written by women, she finds that the history of female authorship and the English novel is very short, hardly yielding one the foundations of a strong tradition. To add to the damage it appeared to her as though an acute awareness of their inferior status in society has served as an impediment to the maximum utilization of women’s creative resources. The writings of the early female novelist are marked by the signs of this awareness, and this serves to hamper their genius. Traces of outrage, resentment, and insecurity at their own status obstruct the capacity of the woman author to concentrate entirely on the development of her own characters; instead, the narratives of these novels seem sparsely autobiographical and indented by the female author's inevitable urge to be either appeasing or rebellious or both toward perceived male critics, and the male race in general. Although Woolf considers this self consciousness to be quite valid especially since it originates from earlier centuries of the English novel, when men held all positions of influence, and writing was not considered to be a woman's domain, she states that it negatively creates an unwarranted burden and prevents most woman writers from achieving her full artistic potential. She sees Jane Austin and George Eliot as examples of women writers who were only beginning to realize their full creative potential.

MONEY AND SPACE: The central notion of A Room of One’s Own is the expression Woolf's core conviction that to produce literary art a woman must have "500 pounds a year and a room of her own." She delves back into history to trace her way to women authors like Jane Austen, who, Woolf declares never found the ideal environment conducive to realizing her full creative potential within the limitations of her family parlour. Her Victorian setting and lifestyle offered her neither any real privacy nor the money to kick start her career.

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf demonstrates that money and space are intrinsically connected to the writing of fiction. Woolf states that the effects of poverty are crushing and that to survive on the threshold of the bare minimum are damaging prospects with regard to exercising one’s creativity. She says that except for a few rare cases, most male authors have lived lives of relative privilege, a factor that allows them to pursue their literary careers without having to worry about surviving on practically nothing, and subsequently tying oneself up with the worst kind of employments simply to get by.

While it is reasonable to assume that poverty and hard labour are significant barriers to the creation of art, it is also important to understand the extent to which these calamities have ruined the prospects of talented and skilled women in history. For instance, even if a woman were to marry a wealthy man, she was not much more than a domestic slave within her own home with no actual control over any possession or money. Adding to the list of her difficulties is a society that is not simply indifferent, but positively hostile to both, the artistic and intellectual aspirations of a woman, as well as the idea of her receiving an education. This is the reason why the concept of personal space is immensely important. Apart from a university education which is a privilege that should, in no way, shape or form be denied to a woman, it is essential to have a room of one’s own. Women have been restricted from exercising their creativity over centuries by men who have relentlessly infringed their space, and therefore Woolf asserts that the only way out of this predicament is the provision of space for female authors. A room of one’s own, therefore, becomes symbolic of a sanctuary, of a sacred haven for women who wish to lose themselves in their art, and write.

Androgynous Mind: In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf states her agreement with Coleridge on the subject of the androgyny of the human mind. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a prominent Romantic poet and philosopher who advocates the concept of an androgynous mind. Both Virginia Woolf and Coleridge believe that an androgynous mind is cultivated once an individual is able to live in the absence of sex-consciousness. This allows one to produce results in their highest capacity, without obstructions and wonderfully free from gender biases.

The primary object of an androgynous mind is to possess both masculine and feminine features in a harmonious balance. She says that as female writers are not allowed to explore newer avenues to found their creativity upon, they have to stick to the limited themes that have been charted down for them, and this leads to radical feminism, which acts as an impediment to good quality writing. An androgynous mind, on the other hand allows an individual to write as ‘themselves,’ devoid of any bias or prejudice as both their masculine as well as their feminine qualities are in perfect harmony. She says,

And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female... The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating... Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine...

Critics however, harshly argue that Woolf’s concept of the androgynous mind is a repression of her own female identity. Additionally, the entire concept of androgyny is a controversial one as it leads to immense ambiguity with regard to one’s sex. However, though Woolf’s theory of androgyny is rebuttable, her intention remains to endorse a beneficial creative energy that does away with gender stereotype, discrimination and prejudice in literature.

Woolf asserts that,

Androgyny is the capacity of a single person of either sex to embody the full range of human character traits, despite cultural attempts to render some exclusively feminine and some exclusively masculine.

What one can thus derive out of A Room of One’s Own is that an androgynous mind remains an idealistic concept, the highest form of accomplishment by any author who aspires to be free of their gender while writing.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

The instantaneous critical reception of A Room of One’s Own was on the whole good, in the sense that many critics seemed to read it as charming, stylistically delightful and politically inoffensive. The general focus in the early reviews was on the essay’s light tone rather than the social critique generally intrinsic in her work.

However, most critics made it a habit to to overlook or miss the essay’s irony and social engagement. Furthermore, where the political messages were in fact, perceived and commented upon, they were sometimes misunderstood and read wrongly. Two classic examples are that of Arnold Bennett, an early twentieth-century novelist, and David Daiches, who were among those critics who tried to discuss the themes and implications of Woolf’s essay. Bennett, for one, declares that Woolf’s essay is not a feminist work and rejects the idea that Woolf’s discussion of women and fiction have any political implications. He said,

It is a book a little about men and a great deal about women. But it is not ‘feminist.’ It is non-partisan.

Daiches, on the other hand reacts to A Room of One’s Own in the opposite manner. He says that her feminism is "rooted in a larger democratic feeling," and that Woolf utilizes her examination of woman’s state of affairs to make a more universal proclamation. This means that Woolf’s feminism focuses not only on women and their liaison to fiction, but all people of genius who have not had an opportunity to use it because of their lack of money and privacy. He says,

All those who have talent should be given the opportunity to develop and use it…[and] should be allowed to have an income and a room of their own.

While Bennett limits the scope of the essay to a non-feminist, completely apolitical ideology, Daiches enlarges the scope to a wide, universal feminism. Woolf’s own intention in writing A Room of One’s Own, however may have actually been to project a view that occupies a position somewhere in between the two extremes.

Critics however, failed to truly understand the personality that was Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own, is not meant to be a socially prescriptive work that charts down a plan for the improvement of society; It focuses simply on the problematic issue of women and the reason they have not managed to create great works of fiction, not on the general predicament of unrealized potential among the working classes.

CONCLUSION

Thus it can be said that A Room of One's Own opened up new arenas for modem criticism. While it does not defy tradition, it allowed Woolf to establish herself as a skilful theoretician and practitioner of literary criticism, a genre that she encouraged women to explore beyond the novel. Moreover, Woolf was able to create a new literary tradition for women to adhere to if they so pleased and this tradition brought in its wake a whole new dimension of ideas and possibilities. It served to educate women as to the opportunities that they have to strive for; it showed them what comprised the void in their lives - the absence of money and space. Additionally Virginia Woolf was bold enough to suggest an unconventional ideology, a state of mind that was considered controversial, and yet was perhaps all that was missing in an individual’s quest for genderless writing. By advocating what can be compared to a new way of life, via the means of her essay A Room of One’s Own, Woolf directly made room for the next generation of women writers and critics to exist and thrive.

DEEPIKA YADAV

ROLL NO. 959

III A