A Room of One's Own

Well, at least there’s one woman writer who claims there is a medium. Virginia Woolf, another feminist writer, claimed that women can and should be successful, but that they need certain things just as men do. As opposed to sex and skill though, she argues women need a room of their own and money. Her work A Room of One’s Own was written in a time not far from great oppression of women, when women could not own property, or money, or vote. In looking at her work, we are asked to question why there is no female Shakespeare. Perhaps it is because, at this time, there aren't the same educational opportunities and there are different social worlds. Women have been creating but in the home, not in literature, as women weren't even allowed to act or be on stage until the Restoration in 1660. Being a woman writer in that time meant that you wanted to be with men, not that you wanted to write, because that's what men do. Most writings by women were burned typically in the 17th century because it was indecent - a matter of life and death - to put oneself on public display like that.

Woolf also argues that it is important to write objectively if women want to be taken seriously as a writer. She says women must not write like a feminist, but instead write beyond the physical differences. In the 1920s, women weren't allowed to walk on the grass or to be in the library, as Woolf points out in her novel. In manners like this, women are constantly reminded of their physical differences and this prevents them from being intellectual like men can be all the time. She says men shouldn't be writing like men and women shouldn't be writing like women, but should both write as humans, objectively and with purpose. Yet men were afraid of the women's movement, and of a shift in power. Woolf says men are self-conscious but only because they need confidence and get it from putting others down. Men put women down because they are afraid and insecure; and as Woolf argues, being self-conscious about your sex makes you a lousy writer. She claims more than anything that you should write objectively as a person, not as a man or a woman, to make good literature. She blames all of this on anyone who brought attention to sex, and even calls Shakespeare androgynous, so that he is appreciated as a writer not as a man.