A Room of One’s own

1. A Room of One’s own (4)

2. Female ancestors • Woolf reinforces her premise that women in the sixteenth century were unable to write because the social environment necessary for greatness was denied to them. She says that while it was presumably easier for women from wealthy families than it was for others less fortunate, obstacles such as public opinion were still, in most cases, insurmountable. She then quotes from a poem by Lady Winchilsea which addresses this very issue: "Alas! A woman that attempts the pen, / Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed / The fault by no virtue can be redeemed" (57). Woolf explains that Lady Winchilsea was restricted by adverse social conditions and notes that her writing was therefore "disturbed by alien emotions like fear and hatred" (58).Woolf then turns to the work of another female writer, Margaret Cavendish, and notes regretfully that her gifts suffered from a lack of formal education. Although Woolf expresses admiration for the spirit in her work, she reports that Ms. Cavendish ultimately "frittered her time away scribbling nonsense and plunging ever deeper into obscurity and folly" (60).

3. Aphra Behn • Finally Woolf comments on the career of the working-class widow, Mrs. (Aphra) Behn, who earned money by selling her stories. She explains that women would have been discouraged from resembling the rather coarse Mrs. Behn but applauds her for setting an encouraging precedent for women of all classes.Women and Fiction: Woolf explains that it was because of the efforts of these women and others like them that writing finally joined the rather short list of genteel professions by which a young lady could "legitimately" earn an income.

4. Women / novels • Woolf argues that the fact that writing gained acceptance as a suitable occupation for middle-class ladies made possible the emergence of the female novelists of the nineteenth century (George Eliot, the Bronte sisters, and Jane Austen). Woolf is struck by the fact that once women began to write, they were almost exclusively drawn to the production of novels; she suggests that this was because they did not have private rooms in which to work. Arguing that novels demand less sustained concentration than poetry or drama, Woolf indicates that this genre could better withstand the constant interruptions that came with writing in the common sitting room.

5. Feminine issues • Woolf reinforces her premise that artists (and particularly writers) require concentration and thus solitude in which to create. Because women were traditionally expected to care for the family and the home, they were denied this kind of extended privacy Woolf suggests that the subject matter dealt with by the nineteenth-century women novelists was impressed upon them by society at large: "[A]ll the literary training that a woman had in the early nineteenth century was training in the observation of character, in the analysis of emotion. Her sensibility had been educated for centuries by the influences of the common sitting-room. People's feelings were impressed upon her; personal relations were always before her eyes" (64). In other words, women were expected to write about "feminine issues": family, relationships, emotion, and so forth.Woolf's consideration of the nineteenth-century women novelists is not entirely meant as a critique, however. Looking at Jane Austen, for instance, Woolf finds that the limiting context of this writer's artistry could be employed as a strength.

6. Austen / Charlotte Bronte • Women and Fiction: According to Woolf's analysis, Jane Austen's temperament was perfectly expressed in her novels. Woolf admits, "I could not find any signs that her circumstances had harmed her work in the slightest. [ . . . ] Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching" (65). Woolf celebrates Austen's ability to write without bitterness but acknowledges that it was a happy coincidence that her temperament was so ideally suited to her situation and the subject matter available to her.In comparing Charlotte Bronte to Jane Austen, however, Woolf recognizes that the restrictions placed on women and women's writing could have terrible artistic effects.Women and Fiction: Woolf finds that Charlotte Bronte's work suffered from the restrictions placed upon its author; she perceives Bronte as being possessed of "more genius" than Austen, but the fact that this talent was forcibly pent-up meant that Bronte's writing would be marred by "indignation" and would come out "deformed and twisted" (69). Although Woolf sympathizes with Bronte's longing to experience life beyond her small domestic sphere, she judges the work itself objectively and concludes that it has suffered.

7. Feminine writing • Woolf then turns her attention to the form of the novel as it has developed over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and reports that it tends to be stylized and predictable. She argues that the only way a novel can transcend its formal limitations is if it is written with integrity and reveals the truth about life. Because of the demand for integrity, Woolf argues that female novelists were on most solid ground when they wrote about the subject matter in their own limited experience.Women and Fiction: Woolf admits that women's lives and "interests" were considered trivial in comparison to those of men, which made it inevitable that their writing would be deemed less important as well.

8. Female tradition • Woolf points out yet another obstacle for female writers of the nineteenth century, namely the lack of a literary tradition upon which to draw. • Thinking back through our mothers (72) • She explains: "It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure" (73).

9. Future of writing • Women and Fiction: Woolf explains that women will need to create their own tradition of writing and predicts that women will have to develop a new form which suits their natural abilities. In an attempt to define such a new genre, she suggests that women's books "should be shorter, more concentrated, than those of men, and framed so that they do not need long hours of steady and uninterrupted work. For interruptions there will always be" (74).