A Room of Ones Own by Virginia Woolf Essay - 2187 Words

Virginia Woolf, a founder of Modernism, is one of the most important woman writers. Her essays and novels provide an insight into her life experiences and those of women of the 20th century. Her most famous works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando: A Biography (1928), The Waves (1931), and A Room of Ones Own (1929) (Roseman 11). A Room of Ones Own is an based on Woolfs lectures at a womens college at Cambridge University in 1928. Woolf bases her thoughts on the question of women and fiction. In the essay, Woolf asks herself the question if a woman could create art that compares to the quality of Shakespeare. Therefore, she examines womens historical experience and the struggle of the woman artist.†¦show more content†¦After doing some research she finds so little data about the everyday lives of women that she makes up their existence imaginatively. She thinks about the successful women novelists of the 19th century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer (Woolf 23). Woolf uses fiction to replace gaps in the factual record to stand up to the biases. Fernham represents the institution of the womens college. The founding of the womens college involved a discouraging effort to raise enough financial and political support. Male universities have been continually and generously supported for centuries. So why have women always been so poor? She thinks about how different things would have been if only Mrs. Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the art of making money and had left it for the education of their daughters (Woolf 22). Law and custom stopped those women from having any legal property rights at all; they were themselves considered property. Woolfs thesis is that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. These are the basic material and social conditions in which achievement becomes possible (Roseman 17). She hopes to settle the problem of women and fiction objectively, rejecting that women are naturally inferior to men. Woolf frequently returns to the material details of the situations: the food that was eaten, money that was spent, comfort of theShow MoreRelatedA Room Of One s Own By Virginia Woolf1337 Words   |  6 PagesWoolf, V. (1929). A room of one s own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf, is a feminist text. It is an extended essay, written in a fictional form, however although this book is narrated by a fictional character and narrative, it highlights and discusses the non-fictional reality of women being subordinate to men. 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In fact, similar topics on feminism can be found between Woolf’s A Room of One’sRead MoreEssay about Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: Women and Fiction1159 Words   |  5 Pagesvoice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the te rms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what