A Room of One's Own Study Guide
Virginia Woolf was an English writer and literary critic. She was the leading figure of the modernist literature of the first half of the 20th century. Her works became the classics of the “flow of consciousness.” And her essay “A Room of One's Own” became the classics of feminist critics.
The essay is based on two reports called “Women and Fiction” that Virginia Woolf presented in October 1928 at two women’s colleges. In this work Virginia investigated the problem of the professional realization of a female writer, revealing to the reader those difficulties that women had to face when they were making their way to the literary field.
The main idea of this famous essay is that a woman needs money and her own room if she is going to write fiction. She draws attention to two main obstacles in the way of women who wants to succeed in writing or any other kind of artistic creation. These barriers are an economic dependency and human prejudice against women.
Angry about her own lack of education and limited personal freedom, Virginia approaches many feminist problems in the text such as women’s lack of access to education as well as their economic and social dependence on men. A woman has not been considered as a character for a long time. Therefore, the writer has to meet not with the cold indifference of the world, but with the hostility caused rather by attempts to step onto the field of activity previously occupied only by men. With equal in destructive prejudice women have to meet to this day.
“A Room of One's Own” is considered an art form that exists at the intersection of fiction and journalism. It has all the features of a fictional story with all its inherent elements: the narrator, social and spatial-temporal parameters, characters, situations, portrait, and landscape.
The article concludes with an appeal to young students, encouraging them to enjoy this freedom of the law, not paying attention to the constant attempts to diminish the importance of women undertaken by society.
Author: Leona Watson
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