Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnSlide 3Slide 4Slide 5Slide 6Slide 7Slide 8Slide 9Slide 10Slide 11Slide 12Slide 13Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnA Room of One’s Own (1929) was first written as a lecture to be delivered to women students at Cambridge University in 1928Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnA Room of One’s Own (1929) was first written as a lecture to be delivered to women students at Cambridge University in 1928Woolf was already a famous novelistVirginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnA Room of One’s Own (1929) was first written as a lecture to be delivered to women students at Cambridge University in 1928Woolf was already a famous novelistWomen had only been admitted to study at Cambridge for about 40 yearsVirginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnA Room of One’s Own (1929) was first written as a lecture to be delivered to women students at Cambridge University in 1928Woolf was already a famous novelistWomen had only been admitted to study at Cambridge for about 40 yearsThe essay is an exploration of the material conditions that make writing possible, and how those conditions have been withheld from womenVirginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnShe begins by blurring the lines between “truth” and “fiction”—sometimes “truth” can be better communicated by fiction:Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licenses of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here— how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham;3 “I" is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for YOU to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. (Longman Anthology, 2662)Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnWoolf associates herself, in an imaginative gesture, with three of the “maids-of-honor” of Mary Queen of Scots, a tragic example of a woman who was manipulated by men (in stark contrast to her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I) :Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please-it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. 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. (Longman Anthology, 2662)Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnFinding it “impossible to keep still,” Woolf takes a walk, and is chastised for walking on the grass:It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cutaway coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. (Longman Anthology, 2662)Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnThen she walks along, thinking of writers like Milton and Thackery (both of whom had been students at Cambridge), and absent-mindedly tries to enter the library: To think of Milton changing the words in that poem seemed to him a sort of sacrilege. This led me to remember what I could of Lycidas and to amuse myself with guessing which word it could have been that Milton had altered, and why. It then occurred to me that the very manuscript itself which Lamb had looked at was only a few hundred yards away, so that one could follow Lamb's footsteps across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure is kept. Moreover, I recollected, as I put this plan into execution, it is in this famous library that the manuscript of Thackeray's Esmond is also preserved. The critics often say that Esmond is Thackeray's most perfect novel. (Longman Anthology, 2662)Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnNotice her technique of “stream-of-consciousness”; deep in serious intellectual thought, she is interrupted by the reality of patriarchal authority: But the affectation of the style, with its imitation of the eighteenth century, hampers one, so far as I remember; unless indeed the eighteenth-century style was natural to Thackeray—a fact that one might prove by looking at the manuscript and seeing whether the alterations were for the benefit of the style or of the sense. But then one would have to decide what is style and what is meaning, a question which—but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. (Longman Anthology, 2663)Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s OwnThen she goes to a luncheon; the food is not so good, and she reflects upon why the food at the men’s colleges is better. Note the similarity of the highlighted text to the idealization of Conrad’s Kurtz: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 dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; 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. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning about