Reading Notes W12: Woolf, Part A

Virginia Woolf, “From a room of One’s own” (336-371)

Virginia Woolf:

·         One of the great modern novelists

·         State of mind/mind and body

·         “She was an ardent feminist who explored-directly in her essays and indirectly in her novels and short stories-the situation of women in society, the construction of gender identity, and the predicament of the woman writer” (336).

·         1882-1941

·         Born as Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882. She was born to an eminent Victorian editor and Historian Leslie Stephen.

·         She went through the development of treating the mentally ill due to suffering psychological breakdowns after each parent’s death.

·         Her writings emphasize the abstract arrangement of perspectives which in turn create a network of meanings.

The story:

·         MAJOR THEME: societies different attitudes toward men and women

·         Women should be given equality

·         Discovery and defining of femininity

·         Women and fiction

·         The identity of being a woman can put a block on women achieving what they want and getting ahead in life. Women have set backs and just can’t get ahead.

Quotes:

·         “That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground” (340). This could possibly mean: women needing equality but this particularly connects to women and fiction, as such, raising a bunch of questions and unsolved problems.

·         “And it was only after a long struggle and with the utmost difficulty that they got thirty thousand pounds together” (349) This somewhat links to women in the fact that so little of people actually wished for women to be educated so 30,000 at least is a considered to be a great deal. *The explanation of this can also be found on page 349 at the bottom*.

·         “Women do not write books about men-a fact that I could not help welcoming with relief, for if I had first to read all that men have written about women, then all that women have written about men, the aloes that flower once in a hundred years would flower twice before I could set pen to paper” (353). Noticing the difference between men and women.

·         “Moreover, in a hundred years, I thought, reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them” (361).

·         “That woman, then, who were born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself…what is the state of mind that is most propitious to the act of creation, I asked (367).