Review of ​A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

​A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf is an essay focusing on the implications and history of women in fiction. It details the types of struggles women have had to exist within in the literature landscape, imagining the lengths with which Jane Austen had to hide her manuscripts, the views of men on women writing, and the difficulties of the past and present. Though, there are also other calls to actions and reassurances for writers, in which she writes, “For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.” Or, “Perhaps a mind that us purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought.” And finally, “Therefore, I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast.” It’s an encouraging read seeing as Woolf mentions that women, given a hundred years would come into themselves in fiction. Seeing the landscape now, this seems to have become realized (though, not fully so). The thesis of Woolf’s argument is that if a person has the material means (i.e. a stable income, a private space) as well as drawing from both their feminine and masculine sides, then a writer can effectively become renowned. And while Woolf does mention many writers (including herself), come from wealth, it’s hard to reckon with the fact that other writers do not have those resources. How does one simply afford five hundred dollars a year (about nine thousand dollars today), without spending most of their time working and less of their time writing?
 
Final Rating: 4/5