A Room Of One's Own

I love this book not just because of its enduring importance - Woolf remains a towering feminist figure - but because of its vivid, imaginative writing.

Based on lectures given to female students at Cambridge, Woolf’s essay argues powerfully for the intellectual independence of women. Such independence, she reasons, must first be materially possible, hence the female writer’s need for that famous "room of one’s own."

To exemplify this, Woolf imagines a certain Judith Shakespeare, the playwright’s equally talented sister: would she not be incapable of achieving the same success as her brother owing to the patriarchal structures of society?… show more.

A Room of One’s Own could be on my list of top five best books overall. Virginia Woolf delivers fierce and razor-sharp social criticism with unsurpassed eloquence. Her anger is palpable, her argument precise, calm, and rational.

Woolf never compromises with literary beauty and wit, using it instead to make her point. Showing how expectations and beliefs about who can do what in daily life underpin society’s power structures, Woolf systematically picks apart the idea of women’s intellectual inferiority to men by showing how thinking and writing require material and cultural circumstances that have been denied to women.

I find… show more.

Virginia Woolf was a pioneer for women’s rights in a world where she had to buy her own printing house just to publish her books.

Not only did she invent stream-of-consciousness writing, she believed that women had the responsibility to write. A Room of One’s Own is based on two lectures she gave at Newnham College in 1928.

While not a traditional YA novel, A Room of One’s Own is quintessential reading for any young woman who wants to be an author.

Almost a hundred years ago, Woolf asked why there were so few women writers. Countering the answers offered by men, that women lacked the brains and knowledge, she set out the real obstacles. They needed a room with a lock and an independent income. Her essay, beautifully written, summarizes the British women writers before Austen, leading up to the decisive moment in the history of literature, an event she claimed was more important even than the Crusades or the War of the Roses: “The middle-class woman began to write.”

When re-reading A Room Of One’s Own a couple of years ago, I was reminded of how funny Woolf is. Room is an extended essay of sorts and it is based on a series of lectures  Woolf gave to female students at Cambridge University in 1928. I cannot overstate how much I recommend reading this work. It is slight in size but mighty in its power to inspire, revitalize, and stimulate! It is also biting and laugh-out-loud funny at times and this is simply heaven to me: feminism, phenomenal writing, pointed wit? Yes, please!  Does this text hold… show more.