Essays on a Room of One's Own

During the Victorian Period, women were “strongly encouraged to adopt attributes of purity, domesticity, and submissiveness” (Bland, Jr. 120). These values and ideals were projected into the writing of many different forms of female-directed literature. Harriet Jacobs’ “Life of a Slave Girl” is an example...

Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) explores the complex nature of the numerous elements that are needed to write good fiction. A Room of One’s Own is a partially fictionalized narrative that is written from the perspective of an unknown woman who...

Virginia Woolf’s ambitious work A Room of One’s Own tackles many significant issues concerning the history and culture of women’s writing, and attempts to document the conditions which women have had to endure in order to write, juxtaposing these with her vision of ideal conditions...

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, which was first published on 24 October 1929 (FAQ, 1998). The essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University...

There is much debate in feminist circles over the “best” way to liberate women through writing. Some argue that a female writer should, in an effort to recapture her stolen identity, attack her oppressive influences and embrace her femininity, simultaneously fostering dimorphic literary, linguistic, and...

“Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading.” Can these words really belong to Virginia Woolf, an “uneducated Englishwoman” who knew half a dozen languages, who authored a shelf’s length of novels and essays, who possessed one of the most rarified literary minds of the twentieth...

An underlying, general disgust for the opposite sex is one of the sentiments shared by writers Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot. While the two authors have similar perspectives on the two genders, both viewing males as the inferior sex, the means by which Woolf and...

Social inequality occurs when certain resources such as wealth, privileges, and social justice from societies are distributed unevenly affecting more people than we realize. Frederick Douglass and Virginia Woolf are two very influential writers who suffered from these inequalities and used their talent in literacy...

A Room of One’s Own explores the relationship between women and literature, and offers advice to aspiring female authors. According to Virginia Woolf “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (4). Woolf’s opinion stems from...

In reading A Room of One’s Own, it is difficult to tell whether Virginia Woolf cares more passionately for her gender or for her craft. Guiding the future of the art of fiction, rather than scorning men or even fighting for justice, seems to be...

Both Virginia Woolf’s critical essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) and her polemic Three Guineas (1938) explore feminist issues of freedom and influence. Despite being written almost a decade later, Three Guineas further explores the ideas and values of A Room of One’s Own,...

A Room of One’s Own Summary During the midst of A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf, Woolf utilizes the experiences of a fictitious woman to support her beliefs on the necessities of a female author. This unnamed lady narrates her thinking as she...

“When you’re down on the lower levels of this pyramid, you will be either on one side or on the other. But when you get up to the top, the points all come together, and there the eye of God opens” (Campbell, 31). Joseph Campbell...

Jordan Reid Berkow Women’s Literature Lambert September 19,1998 An Audience Member’s Perspective on A Room of One’s Own A young, female reader of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own would experience an array of emotional responses to the author, ranging from empathy to hostility....