British Literature Survey
Reference Pages: Virginia Woolf Group

Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929)
by Stacey Hensley

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf published in 1929 is a series of essays originally given as lectures at Newnham and Girton women’s colleges in Cambridge on the topic of Women and Fiction. Woolf admits that she could never conclusively answer the question of the relation of the two so instead she offers an opinion: in order to write good fiction, women need money and privacy. In order to relate to her audience her thought process and how she formulated her opinion, Woolf uses a fictional female character (“call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please – it is not a matter of any importance”) who is wrestling with the same topic, and a fictional college “Oxbridge” (Woolf 4). The fictional character reflects on the differences of the educational opportunities offered to men and women. She looks at education, scholarship, and history and can find so little of it written by actual women that she decides to reconstruct it within her own imagination. Woolf also uses a fictional character called Judith Shakespeare who, unable to find an outlet for her creative genius, “killed herself one winter’s night” (Woolf 48). A Room of One’s Own is a foundation for 20th century feminist thought, encouraging women to become more involved within the literary tradition. Woolf gives a reconstruction of women’s role in literature as well as an avid feministic argument in which she urges women to play a greater part in the literary tradition.

Works Cited

Hussey, Mark. Virginia Woolf A-Z. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Johnson, Claudia Durst, "Room of One's Own, A." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Scholastic Library Publishing, 2006 <http://gme.grolier.com> (February 1,
2006).

Santos, Matilda. SparkNote on A Room of One's Own. 1 Feb. 2006
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/roomofonesown/.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Orlando: Harvest/HBJ, 1989.

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu