Assignment:
A Room of One’s Own is a species of creative non-fiction, part lecture, part literary history, and part imaginative hypothetical musing, as in the story of Shakespeare’s sister.
Questions 1-4 concern chapter 1 [Women and Fiction]. Questions 5-9 focus on the excerpt from Chapter 3 [Shakespeare’s sister].
1. Read the editor’s introduction to Woolf’s essay, taking note of the essay’s original form as a lecture. What might you assume about the original audience and how does knowing this make sense of some of Woolf’s rhetorical choices? In what sense is Woolf showing, as well as telling, her audience what to do?
2.How does Woolf characterize Mary Beton’s experiences at the College?
3. Woolf devotes a lot of space to describing her material, physical surroundings as well as their more abstract, symbolic significance. Look at her descriptions of the women’s college as compared to the men’s: how do they differ? How are these differences reflected in the traditions of the university and/or in the ideas and conventions of British society more broadly?
4. Woolf quotes from Victorian poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Christina Rosetti in order to illustrate how men and women related to one another before World War I (the “Great War”). What does she say about these examples and how have these relations changed since then?
[Day 2: Shakespeare’s sister]
5. Taken as an intervention in literary history and a study of women’s writing, why does it make sense to start with Shakespeare, or, more particularly, with his sister?
6. Who are the women writers Woolf names specifically?
7. What is the woman writer’s generic dilemma and what impact does it have on mental health?
8. And on their writing?
9. Why does Woolf talk about anonymity and chastity? In what sense are these comparable conditions?
Discussion:
1. After reading the editor’s introduction to Woolf’s essay, one can assume that the original audience for Woolf’s lecture was “women at the colleges where she has been invited to speak”. (pg. 1228) In this sense, Woolf’s rhetorical choice makes sense, because she is targeting the audience she desires to speak with using their linguistic preference. Additionally, she is more easily allowing them to embody herself as they read her first person narrative, of thought. In this sense, she is allowing them to begin to engage in the same thought process, so, as opposed to her discerning the facts and societal observations and coming to a conclusion, they are able to do this, themselves, through her writing. Woolf says that she will be unable to do the alternate, writing, “I should never be able to fulfill what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer—to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever.”(pg. 1229) In this sense, she is both showing and telling the audience, whom, it is to be assumed are women that “have money and a room of [their] own”, that they must engage in internal discourse and contemplative thought, in order to arrive at their own conclusion about women and fiction.
2. Woolf characterizes Mary Beton’s experiences at the college as a dichotomous feeling of forbidden inspiration. Beton is enchanted by how “The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it Is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning.”. Beton feels as though Oxbridge is a type of haven, however, her experience at the library where the “guardian angel barring the way” informed her that “ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.”. This embodies the dual sided experience of a woman at college, who is both experiencing the beauty of higher education, though simultaneously oppressed by the limits of her privilege.
3. The differences between Woolf’s reflections on the natural surroundings of the Men’s and the Women’s college reflect mainly on the difference in order and organization between the two. This could reflect further on the state of traditions at the two, meaning that the Men’s college, having been older (naturally) has more consistent and well-received traditions, and structures. Whilst the women’s college has newer, less targeted and well-understood traditions. Furthermore, I think the descriptions demonstrate that there is multiplication occurring at the women’s college- making something presently good into something great in the future, whilst at the men’s college, they are simply trying to conserve. For instance, when writing about the men’s college Woolf writes, “…Innumerable beadles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks; the treasure-house was being made secure for another night.”. Opposing, Woolf writes the following about the women’s college: “The gardens of Fernham lay before me in the spring twilight, wild and open, and in the long grass, sprinkled and carelessly flung were daffodils and bluebells, not orderly perhaps at the best of times, and now windblown and waving as they tugged at their roots.”. Comparing these two quotes, it can be determined that the men’s college has a solid foundation, while the women’s college does not.
4. In comparing the Victorian poet’s writings, Woolf identifies that something is strikingly different now, then must have been before WW1. In these poems, it is evident that both men and women are awaiting one another. There is a simplistic romanticism that Woolf, admires but also regards and simple. Woolf points out that these poets, since deceased, revered love as a light-hearted certainty: as men and women simply wait for love to happen upon them in their opposing form. Furthermore, Woolf states that this light hearted view of romance, which was so easily hummed before luncheons, was murdered by the violence of WW1. This implicates the change which then was exacerbated by women’s education, and no longer allowed men and women to simply wait for love to happen upon them- rather, it demanded that men and women occupy controversial or acceptable roles with likened people, and think about love before allowing it to romance them.
Shakespeare’s Sister:
5. I think it make sense for Woolf to start with Shakespeare because of how renowned he is (and was). In England, Shakespeare has a sense of literary certainty. Woolf’s audience is certain to know Shakespeare, and to admire him. However, there is still a distance of history- a few hundred years- that makes this a comfortable time period for Woolf to manipulate. Furthermore, by inventing Shakespeare’s sister, it is an entire “what-if” which allows It to be more universally applied to other families who have successful sons and oppressed daughters. Additionally, since Shakespeare was viewed as such an immense contribution to modern society, the oppression of his sister would not be seen as a service to society- avoiding nuisance- but rather as a disservice to society: limiting the breadth of the same blood that Shakespeare had simply in the name of gender.
6. The female writers that Woolf names are Charlotte Bronte (Currer Bell), Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), and Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (George Sand). Each of these are women who wrote renowned novels under male pseudonyms.
7. The generic dilemma of the female writer was a lack of privacy. There is often very few places where the woman writer may go to avoid the everyday disruptions that men can so easily escape, because women do not often have a room of one’s own. This means that they have very little ability to think by themselves or to escape misery. Thus resulting In their permanent placement at the bottom of whatever emotions surround them inescapably.
8. No matter how talented the female writer, they are still engaging in the difficult task of writing, which often requires peace and isolation- which was tragically difficult for women to receive. Because women lacked privacy, they were, for the most part, unable to formulate the thoughts and words that composed good writing.
9. Woolf discusses anonymity and chastity, because both work to save women from the scrutiny of others. In one sense, anonymity allows women to embody a persona that is male- like George Sand, and thus do not have to embody a female role. Meaning, in anonymity, a woman can write a man’s novel without having to think about being told that woman shouldn’t write. In the same sense, if a woman remains chaste, she is allowed to avoid scrutiny and is even uplifted for not falling into to her womanly instincts of desire. (Like Catalina de Erauso).
