A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN ; REVIEW
Virginia woolf (1882-1941) was a English author, essayist, publisher ,and writer of short stories. and she was a central figure feminist criticism .her most famous works include the novels mrs Dalloway , to the light house, and orlando .
Her book length essay A room of ones own published in 1929 The essay is generally seen as a feminist
text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space
for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by men.her famous quote " a woman must have and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". The title of the essay comes from Woolf's conception that, "a woman must have and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" .Woolf notes that women have been kept from writing because of their relative poverty, and freedom will bring women the freedom to write. through this work she reveals that true nature of woman and true nature of fiction.the nerrater sits on the banks of river at oxbridge pondering the question of woman and fiction. she represents metaphorically in terms of fishing.'thought ...had let its line down in to the stream" of mind ,where it drifts in the current and waits for the tug of an idea. she scurries back to her proper place on her gravel path remarking that while" no very great harm " had been done, she had lost her "little fish"of an idea.The essay examines whether women were capable of producing, and in fact free to produce work of the quality of shakes pears addressing the limitations that past and present women writers facen delivering the lectures outlined in the essay, Woolf is speaking to
women who have the opportunity to learn in a formal, communal setting.
Woolf lets her audience know the importance of their education at the
same time warning them of the precariousness of their position in
society.
one part , Woolf explained a fictional character, Judith,
"Shakespeare's sister," to potrays that a woman with Shakespeare's
gifts would have been denied the same opportunities to develop them
because of the doors that were closed to women. Like Woolf, who stayed
at home while her brothers went off to school, Judith stays at home
while William goes off to school. Judith is trapped in the home: "She
was as adventurous, as imaginatives.
But she was not sent to school.
Woolf's prose holds all the hopes of Judith Shakespeare against her
brother's hopes in the first sentence, then abruptly curtails Judith's
chances of fulfilling her promise with "but." While William learns,
Judith is chastised by her parents should she happen to pick up a book,
as she is inevitably abandoning some household chore to which she could
be attending. Judith is betrothed, and when she does not want to marry,
she is beaten and then shamed into marriage by her father. While
Shakespeare establishes himself, Judith is trapped by the confines of
the expectations of women. Judith kills herself, and her genius goes
unexpressed, while Shakespeare lives on and establishes his legacy.
In the essay, Woolf again potrays a historical account of
women writers. Woolf examines the careers of several female
authors, including Aphra behn , Jane austen, the bronte sisters, Goerge eliot In addition to female authors,
Harrison is presented in the essay only by her initials separated by
long dashes, and Woolf first introduces Harrison as "the famous scholar.
The essay quotes Oscar browning through the words of his biographer H.E wortham the impression left on his mind, after looking over any set of
examination papers, was that the best woman was intellectually the
inferior of the worst man.'In addition to these mentions, Woolf subtly refers to several of the
most prominent intellectuals of the time, and her hybrid name from the university of oxford and the university of cambridge- oxford has become a well-known term, although she was not the first to use it.The narrator of the work is at one point identified as mary beaton and mary setonor Mary Carmichael", alluding to the sixteenth century ballad mary hamilton
In referencing the tale of a woman about to be hanged for existing
outside of marriage and rejecting motherhood, the narrator identifies
women writers such as herself as outsiders who exist in a potentially
dangerous space. It is important to note that Woolf's heroine, Judith
Shakespeare, dies by her own hand, after she becomes pregnant with the
child of an actor. Like the woman in the Four Marys, she is pregnant and
trapped in a life imposed on her. Woolf sees Judith Shakespeare, Mary
Beaton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, as powerless, impoverished women
everywhere as threatened by the spectre of death.
