A Room of One's Own
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's persistence that women writers needed two things, enough money and a place to write, indicated the growing awareness, not only of women's issues in general, but of how effectively a strong hold economic control put on women. Her thesis is that: ...a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction...one that leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved...(Woolf, 21), Which is a limited range, yet she extends the hope that her expression may shed at least some light on those questions as well. Woolf tries to explain of how she arrived at her thesis. To present this argument, she takes an alternative route through fiction: 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. (Woolf, 21) With this introduction, the narrative portion of the essay begins. She uses rhetorical question, personal experiences, comparisons, and provocative statement as her techniques to deliver a strong argument in
Woolf wrote a statement that there is a uniquely female way of writing--a woman's sentence--is one of her most provocative statements. She argues that women see and feel and value differently than men, and that because of this they must also write differently if they are to be true to themselves and their experience. Woolf's comparisons between Shakespeare and his sister is expanding more of the point that genius depends on certain conditions--and that these conditions, at the most basic level, are material and social. Shakespeare is so often approved as the pure genius that went beyond all conditions of circumstance and surroundings, his period and his sister supply suitable outline for Woolf's argument. There are two important thoughts in play here. The first is that all art, even Shakespeare's, is in fact enabled by a historical, social, and economic reality, whether or not that reality finds expression in the art itself. The different outcomes of William and Judith Shakespeare serve to produce this point, and also to account for the fact that women simply were not writing literature at that time. The second point is an artistic one: that good art in fact should not betray the personal circumstances surrounding its creation. It is a curious fact that novelist have the way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something wise
Some common words found in the essay are:
Virginia Woolf's, Judith Shakespeare, writing literature, woman money own, money own write, rhetorical question, women historically, soup salmon ducklings, women fiction, true nature, woman money, material social, own write, woolf's argument, personal experiences,
Approximate Word count = 955
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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