A Room of One's Own (Annotated) (original 1929; edition 2005)

I don't generally enjoy Virginia Woolf's writing very much, I must confess. I don't find her writing, in general, very compelling. But reading this essay, I did. I didn't want to put it down. It helps that it has a narrative, kind of a story, and that it's well-suited to a stream-of-consciousness style.

The things she says are not irrelevant yet, either. Certainly not when you're looking at the development of women's writing, but also not when you're thinking about women's writing now. I'm sure modern female writers disagree about such ideas as the androgynous mind being necessary, or the idea that one might need to get away from having a family to be a writer, or whatever, but I think it's still important to read this. All the better if men read it too. If nothing else, the last few pages, where she points out the impact that women have not -- yet -- had. We're closer now that we were then, but still not close enough. ( )

This is one of those special books that I can re-read again and again... ( )

A little Candlemas reading for the wolf month.

I read this when I was 20 or so, and it seemed a historical document, something I was indebted to, as if she were speaking only to women who'd written before me, before the third wave of feminism, so confident was I that things had changed.

I've been writing for 20 years now. After two decades of sacrifice and focus, writing "deformed and twisted" books while watching only certain women's voices and stories being rewarded with a broad readership, Woolf's argument is entirely necessary, "...to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while." ( )

For such a spot-on piece of feminism, this had some very narrow-minded literary criticism. I don't even know how to rate it - there are a few 5-star sections and even more 2-star sections, and I could tell you precisely where each begins and ends.

Maybe it's just that the rant about writing has aged badly. One can only blabber so much about women writers and men writers before the modern reader starts asking for information about people writers. Still, I can't help but think that, for a bisexual bipolar intellectual woman, Woolf was a bit of a literary fundamentalist. Women must write as women, not as men - but they mustn't try too hard or the writing will become whiny and tainted (apparently literary genius and self-expression are mutually incompatible - yes, she says this explicitly). Except the best writing minds are androgynous, so they should avoid becoming dissociated from their inner man. I'm sorry, what?

Anyway, let's say that the lit-crit part has aged badly. Why, then, does the feminist discourse in this ring so modern and real? It's just as old as the rest of the book, yet it's not even remotely as outdated. The more I think about this, the more frightening it seems to me. ( )

I've always thought that Virginia Woolf was really underrated. This is much different than reading her fiction such as in To The Lighthouse and Orlando because it's a nonfiction examination of many female writers such as Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen. It supposes how difficult writing was for women in the 1800s and earlier as well as how female writers were perceived. It's a really good landmark to show how far women have come through the years. However, Woolf misses the mark in some ways in terms of an elitism in dwelling on the idea of genius existing mainly in the upper and educated classes. Still, a very interesting and thought provoking read. ( )