The Book Review: A Room of One's Own

Author: Virginia Woolf

Genre: Essay, Non Fiction, Feminism

Publisher: Maple Classics

Pages: 101

Year of Publication: 1929, Reprinted in 2019

What does a woman need to write? - 500 a year and a room of one’s own. More than 91 years after the book was written by Virginia Woolf, so many things have changed, yes indeed women have started to write, however, the book is so aligned to the present times. Maybe writing as an agenda has been partially solved but empowered women and the opportunities they receive has still miles to go as a cause.

An essay by the author on women's struggle for creative independence and the importance to assert themselves has been beautifully captured in this thin but hard-hitting book which would give one a false impression that it can be devoured in an hour or so. However, do not be mistaken by the size but focus on the beautifully strung words which make us hit with the hard reality of the condition of women and why they were not able to write as much as men did in those eras. The statements such as “Women who were born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, were unhappy women” says it all about the plight of women in those days. Woolf takes us to a hypothetical situation where if even Shakespeare’s sister would have existed, the travesties she would have had to face while her brother was allowed to grow and excel would explain the stark difference. Judith Shakespeare, who would have had to stay at home and get chained to the shackles of domesticity, while her brother gallantry paraded off to school is a compelling statement that can't be ignored. On further rumination, she was wild, she was adventurous, yet she did not get the opportunity to fulfill her geniuses like her brothers walk to the fame.

Woolf compared the condition of the women writers with the men during those times and eventually came to a point that to write, a woman needed a room of her own and financial independence. Many women could have become brilliant authors, writers, poets sans the drudgery they face at home due to being overburdened by the mundane work. A liberated woman would eventually turn out to be a successful woman. She boldly addresses lesbian love through a fictional character named Mary Carmichael. She is very much present in many of us yet not brave enough to come out and express herself. “ She still wears the shoddy old fetters of class on her feet”. Whether it’s class or society - the world eventually leashes the wild spirit in women.

Woolf concludes by rendering the fact that if women have the habit of freedom and courage to write exactly what they think, escape from the chains of drudgery & day to day work, see the world through their own lenses and how the patriarchal society construct has moulded it to become, then the opportunity will arise and give birth to even the dead poet Shakespeare’s sister who was somewhere lost behind the shadows of her brother.

“Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born."