A Room of One's Own

“When a subject is highly controversial—and any question about sex is that—one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact.”

Woolf argues that there is no absolute truth regarding complex sociopolitical issues, like sexism. Her intention to guide readers through her own rationalizations allows Woolf to accomplish her goal of allowing the audience to establish “their own conclusions” about sexism (4). Her final suggestion that “Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact” intentionally blurs the division between truth and falsehood (4), anchoring her literary analysis in the coming chapters in the logic that perceptions of deeply entrenched social injustices are often more obscure than the representations created in fiction writing.

“Thought [...] had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.”

This quote contains one of Woolf’s many metaphors and describes the process of developing a thought into an idea. In this metaphor, the thought is a fish, and the narrator is fishing and “catches” the thought in the stream of her mind. Once caught, the narrator finds the thought to be too small, as it is not yet a full idea, arguing that a thought must be left in the mind to grow into an idea, as a fish would be left to grow in the water until it was large enough to catch and eat. This metaphor is extended throughout the work to illustrate how women’s thoughts are stunted by social constructions that limit them.

“If only Mrs. Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, [...] we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions. [...] Only, if Mrs. Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been—that was the snag in the argument—no Mary.”

The imaginary narrator, while considering the intergenerational poverty of women, examines what would be different if women had access to material wealth throughout history. The narrator uses her friend Mary Seton and her friend’s mother, Mrs. Seton, as an example to illustrate that the primary reason women remain poor is their relegation to the home. If women are forced to raise children and serve as the domestic keepers of the home, they have no time or means to make money; and conversely, women who choose to make money would not have time to raise children. Woolf’s argument is that people should be free to pursue their interests at will, and forcing any one group of people to fulfill a certain role (in this case, childrearing) creates a system that proliferates inequities.

“One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth. For that visit to Oxbridge and the luncheon and the dinner had started a swarm of questions. Why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? What effect has poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?”

As the narrator continues her quest to understand the complex relationship between women and fiction, she identifies her main ideas in a series of largely rhetorical questions. She is searching for a greater truth to explain her own experiences and observations about the role of women and literature. She asks, “Why did men drink wine and women water?” in relation to the two meals she ate in Chapter 1 at Oxbridge and Fernham. Her questions help support the point that women experience intergenerational poverty–both in a financial and metaphysical senses–while men reap all the benefits of education and refinement.

“The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub-editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the Judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the racehorses and the yachts. He was the director of the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders. He left millions to charities and colleges that were ruled by himself. He suspended the film actress in mid-air. He will decide if the hair on the meat axe is human; he it is who will acquit or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything.”

The narrator discovers that most books about women are written by men, which prompts this response where she explains how this exemplifies the presence of the patriarchy in the UK (the “paper” referenced in the first sentence describes her list of these books). Under the patriarchy (especially at the turn of the 20th century) men hold the authority to change the system, profit from it, and engage in the various opportunities he has created there. This develops Woolf’s arguments that women are impoverished and that poverty is one of the direct causes for women’s misrepresentation in literature.

“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn their crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilised societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge.”

Woolf’s argument that men position women as inferior to inflate their own social standing relies on the metaphor of the “looking-glass,” or mirror. Women’s perceived inferiority makes men feel as though they are greater than they really are; therefore, the perceived superiority that men feel leads them to enact violence and conquest. In other words, the desire to seek and increase power is driven by the perception of inequality because women are unable to access or leverage this power.

“My aunt […] died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor’s letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it, I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever. Of the two—the vote and the money—the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important.”

The narrator’s aunt leaves her a fixed income, thus allowing the narrator to write or spend her time as she pleases. This introduces a key tenet of Woolf’s main argument: Women need a room of their own and a reliable source of money to write. This second stipulation is essential because access to a workspace alone does not negate the difficulties women face–they need financial security as well. Woolf’s claim that this money is of greater importance than the vote illustrates the many ways that first wave feminists sought legal equality to men, as many laws remained in place at the time this work was published prohibiting and limiting women’s access to holding their own wealth.

“If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; [...] as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. [...] Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact, she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.”

This quote directly engages with the discussion of women and fiction, particularly the fictitiously successful women who are written by male authors. These women exist only in fiction because real women are so limited under the prohibitions and prejudices of sexism that they are not allowed to succeed. Woolf illustrates this incongruity between the belittlement of real women and the veneration of fictional women to highlight that male authors objectify women by using them as important figures within their written works. The misrepresentation of women characters as autonomous and capable in fiction obscures the reality of women’s lived experiences.

“Soon, however, before [Judith Shakespeare] was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighbouring wool-stapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer’s night and took the road to London.”

This quote is part of Woolf’s thought experiment about Judith Shakespeare, the imagined sister of William Shakespeare. She shares his gift for writing but not the approval of her parents or society. Judith, as with many teenage girls in 16th century England, is forced to marry according to her father’s wishes, but when she disobeys, she is beaten and scolded. This description of women’s lack of autonomy in marriage is essential in illustrating the objectification of women under the patriarchy. Even though marriages of this time (and through the 20th century) are strongly associated with women–often presented as the ultimate end goal for a young girl–Woolf shows readers how this arrangement teaches girls to devalue themselves, rendering them as either objects exchanged in the marriage market or outcasts like Judith.

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

This quote immediately follows the story of Judith Shakespeare. Woolf argues that patriarchal society kept many women who felt the urge to create art (like Judith) from achieving this goal. The description of women who feel “crazed with the torture” over their desire to create shows that women often internalize misogynistic expectations and impose them on themselves (49), further normalizing sexist beliefs. Her suggestion that “Anon” is usually a woman illustrates how social limitations prohibiting women from engaging in art only work superficially, and women with truly creative spirits can produce art without attaching their name to combat these limitations.

“It is fairly evident that even in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist. On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted. Her mind must have been strained and her vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that. For here again we come within range of that very interesting and obscure masculine complex which has had so much influence upon the woman’s movement; that deep-seated desire, not so much that she shall be inferior as that he shall be superior, which plants him wherever one looks, not only in front of the arts, but barring the way to politics too, even when the risk to himself seems infinitesimal and the suppliant humble and devoted.”

The narrator uses examples from the English literary canon to show the various ways women are discouraged from pursuing a career in the arts, notably including domestic violence. The physical oppression of women, usually manifesting as physical violence, is directly linked to other social oppressions that reify the limitation of women. Woolf labels this process of oppression a “masculine complex” wherein men desire sexist oppression to validate their imagined sense of superiority. The latter half of this quote investigates the ways this complex operates: To retain the superior designation, men are omnipotent in the life of women, prohibiting women from accomplishing even the most “humble” achievements.

“Mrs. [Aphra] Behn was a middle-class woman with all the plebeian virtues of humour, vitality and courage; a woman forced by the death of her husband and some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits. She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote [...] for here begins the freedom of the mind, or rather the possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it likes. For now, that Aphra Behn had done it, girls could go to their parents and say, You need not give me an allowance; I can make money by my pen. Of course the answer for many years to come was, Yes, by living the life of Aphra Behn! Death would be better!”

The narrator is describing the works of Aphra Behn, one of the first middle-class English women to support herself as an author during her lifetime. This example contrasts with the previous women mentioned in this chapter to highlight the shift toward middle-class women becoming literate and entering the world of literature. Behn, in many ways, proved that women could make enough money to live as authors, marking an essential shift in the possibilities accessible to women; although, as the narrator illustrates at the end of this quote, the idea of women making a living as authors was frowned upon by many in society.

“Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontës and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

The primary argument Woolf makes in this quote is that without a literary tradition that includes examples of women, early women writers struggled to establish themselves in literature. Writing and literary canons do not exist in a vacuum; thus, they are always changing to reflect new ideas. Without representation of women authors, not only do women struggle to express themselves within a literary tradition designed for and by men, but women are also omitted from the ideologies represented in the male-dominated English literary canon.

“But how impossible it must have been for [early women authors] not to budge either to the right or to the left. 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. Only Jane Austen did it and Emily Brontë. It is another feather, perhaps the finest, in their caps. They wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal pedagogue—write this, think that.”

Woolf argues that it takes great courage to create a space for women in the English literary tradition because of the canon’s male dominance. Women authors of 19th century England faced extreme “criticism” for violating the patriarchal expectations of their peers; and as such, to be good authors, they were forced to not only create high quality work but to transcend the perceived limitations associated with their sex. Though Woolf’s claim that “only” Austen and Emily Brontë “wrote as women write” is rather dubious (74-75), her point that the most authentic works produced by women during this time period do not appeal to male-centric expectations remains true.

“Moreover, a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built [...]. And this shape too has been made by men out of their own needs for their own uses. There is no reason to think that the form of the epic or of the poetic play suits a woman any more than the sentence suits her. But all the older forms of literature were hardened and set by the time she became a writer. The novel alone was young enough to be soft in her hands—another reason, perhaps, why she wrote novels. Yet who shall say that even now “the novel” [...] is rightly shaped for her use? No doubt we shall find her knocking that into shape for herself when she has the free use of her limbs; and providing some new vehicle, not necessarily in verse, for the poetry in her.”

This quote concludes much of Woolf’s discussion concerning the importance of representation in the literary canon. She repeats a similar argument as before: “older forms of literature” (77), like epic poems, ballads, and verse, were created by and for men. The novel, a rather new form of literature in the 19th century, thus appealed to women authors. The end of this quote engages with Woolf’s modernist questioning of what constitutes reality, and she freely imagines that women might invent a new type of literature. Though this furthers her essentialist conceptualization of sex and gender, it also illustrates her willingness to reject traditional ideas (such as, in this case, the idea that literary expression is anchored to existing media).

“And, determined to do my duty by her as reader if she would do her duty by me as writer, I turned the page and read . . . I am sorry to break off so abruptly. Are there no men present? Do you promise me that behind that red curtain over there the figure of Sir Chartres Biron is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these—“Chloe liked Olivia . . .” Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”

The narrator introduces the important line from the fictitious Mary Carmichael’s Life’s Adventure that reads “Chloe liked Olivia” (82). The narrator directly addresses the audience–breaking the fourth wall, in a sense–by asking that “you promise me” that there are no men reading these words (82). Woolf’s choice to frame the introduction to the line “Chloe liked Olivia” (82) functions in several ways. First, it engages with her stream of consciousness narration, presenting the situation to readers as if it has just occurred in real time; secondly, the narrator invokes humor to subtly illustrate that men reject the idea that women might like other women. This uses some semi-coded language to protect Woolf from laws prohibiting the discussion of queerness, but it also highlights an important aspect of patriarchal oppression: It is partially driven by the irrational male fear that if women like other women (instead of viewing them as competition), then men will become obsolete.

“He would open the door of drawing-room or nursery, I thought, and find her among her children perhaps, or with a piece of embroidery on her knee—at any rate, the centre of some different order and system of life, and the contrast between this world and his own [...] would at once refresh and invigorate; and there would follow, even in the simplest talk, such a natural difference of opinion that the dried ideas in him would be fertilised anew; and the sight of her creating in a different medium from his own would so quicken his creative power that insensibly his sterile mind would begin to plot again, and he would find the phrase or the scene which was lacking when he put on his hat to visit her.”

This quote highlights a different examination of sexist structures and why men willingly uphold patriarchal values. The narrator ponders how the traditional division of men as providers and women as caregivers might have felt to the individual man. Upon returning home, he finds comfort in his wife’s occupancy of the supporting role. Perhaps without realizing it, many men likely found value in the creative endeavors their wives were allowed to partake in because they appeared simple, more manageable than their own. This quote indirectly articulates the complex idea that under sexist oppression, when women are relegated to the realm of the home, their endeavors appear artificially easier than endeavors that take place in the real world.

“For there is a spot the size of a shilling at the back of the head which one can never see for oneself. It is one of the good offices that sex can discharge for sex—to describe that spot the size of a shilling at the back of the head. [...] Think with what humanity and brilliancy men, from the earliest ages, have pointed out to women that dark place at the back of the head! [...] A true picture of man as a whole can never be painted until a woman has described that spot the size of a shilling.”

Woolf uses a metaphor in this quote to describe the idea that there are qualities about each sex that cannot be easily perceived by a member of that sex. She describes these concealed qualities as “a spot the size of a shilling”—a coin formerly used as currency in the UK—“at the back of the head” (90). This metaphor uses a common object (a shilling) as a link to the idea that these concealed features associated with sex are also common. Her comment regarding the “humanity and brilliancy” with which men describe women’s features is meant to be ironic and perhaps humorous: Men have spent, as the narrator illustrates in Chapter 2, a great deal of time describing and pathologizing women based upon sexist presumptions–which is to say they tend to describe women without “humanity and brilliancy” (90).

“But the sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness. 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; and in the man’s brain, the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain, the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating.”

While considering the concept of “the unity of the mind” (97), the narrator suggests that men and women have masculine and feminine elements present within their minds. Because people, according to Woolf, possess both qualities within their minds, a balance between masculine and feminine must be struck to achieve this “unity.” Though several key terms are not explicitly defined in this context (namely, “unity,” “harmony,” and “spiritually co-operating”), Woolf’s main argument is that people must accept that there are masculine and feminine elements within everyone regardless of sex, and to ignore one influence is to violate the natural state of the mind.

“After reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter “I.” One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter “I.” One began to be tired of “I.” Not but what this “I” was a most respectable “I”; honest and logical; as hard as a nut, and polished for centuries by good teaching and good feeding. I respect and admire that “I” from the bottom of my heart. But—here I turned a page or two, looking for something or other—the worst of it is that in the shadow of the letter “I” all is shapeless as mist. Is that a tree? No, it is a woman.”

While reading a contemporary book written by a man, the narrator discovers the oppressive nature of the subject “I,” representing the author’s masculine point of view. This quote uses the “I” as a metaphor for the way that an overly masculine point of view erases women characters to the point that they are flat and indistinguishable from objects. Woolf does not undermine the validity of the male perspective (she is not ironic in her statement that she “respect[s] and admire[s]” the work of men; 100); rather, she argues that when women are portrayed in works that take a masculine perspective, the framing of the work becomes detractive and strips the women characters of any autonomy. This renders women in these works as the opposite of the men characters who are autonomous, which reifies sexist ideologies in the real world.

“I began to envisage an age to come of pure, of self-assertive virility, such as the letters of professors (take Sir Walter Raleigh’s letters, for instance) seem to forebode, and the rulers of Italy have already brought into being. For one can hardly fail to be impressed in Rome by the sense of unmitigated masculinity; and whatever the value of unmitigated masculinity upon the state, one may question the effect of it upon the art of poetry.”

This quote examines what the real-world effects of a society that values hyper-masculine representations in media might be. Woolf has argued that contemporary literature of the 1920s reflects this hyper-masculinity, and she suggests that literature is both shaping of shaped by broader social practices. At the time of publication, this quote represents the sense of uncertainty felt by many in Europe during the late 1920s and early 1930s as the precursors to World War II unfolded. The mention of “Rome” and its “unmitigated masculinity” refers to Benito Mussolini’s rising fascist regime in Italy. To attribute “unmitigated masculinity” as one source of fascist rhetoric is criticism rooted in fascism’s extreme upholding of traditional patriarchal values that further devalue women.

“‘This great book,’ ‘this worthless book,’ the same book is called by both names. Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”

Having left the imagined narrator behind, Woolf now addresses the audience as herself. Her statement “Praise and blame alike mean nothing” illustrates that judging the quality of literature is but a superficial measurement (106), which applies analogously to the arbitrary measurements of the sexes. In some ways, this statement appears to contradict some of the claims made primarily in Chapters 2-5 wherein the narrator judges the work of authors like Jane Austen, Aphra Behn, and William Shakespeare; however, Woolf’s inclusion of this concession that such judgements are meritless in the face of authentic creation indicates a self-awareness of the imperfection of her own analytical practices.

“What is meant by ‘reality’? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now in a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech—and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality.”

In this discussion of what constitutes reality, Woolf directly engages with the modernist practice of questioning traditionally held beliefs. Something as abstract yet ubiquitous as “reality” can be hard to define, and Woolf uses metaphors to argue that “reality” is everything and nothing, suggesting that it is a collectively held construct that is pervasive in the individual’s lived experiences. Her conclusion that a writer occupies “the presence of this reality” refers to the idea that a good writer uses their authentic worldview to construct reality in their written works (110), and in this construction, writers are granted a different–perhaps more complete–vantage of reality as a collectivist construct.