(An essay I'd written while earning my M.A. in English Literature)
Money,
gender inequality and truth are some of the hallmarks of Virginia Woolf’s
novel, A Room of One’s Own (1945).
Presented with strong feminist thought, Woolf explores the literature of female
authorship through a social scope of varying conditions, i.e. a lack of
financial and leisure abundance and a room of her own, in which to write. Woolf
delves deeper still into the theoretically and historically women’s
literature, which has at its basis, hierarchies of dissent. A Room of One’s Own is presented as a
portrayal of the thinking woman and fiction, while serving as an argument too
with strong feminist undertones and it continues to influence public opinion as
it explores the literary achievement of women.
Woolf
was raised during the Victorian era in a strict home with rigid rules and
customs. She undoubtedly experienced the same hindrance she writes about. After
her parent’s death, she moved to the other side of London, and spent time at
Cambridge, listening to lectures, which stimulated her intellectually which prompted her to draft, A Room of One’s Own, which served as “a sort of primer of
feminist concepts: the experience of oppression and victimization, the
importance of exclusion and marginality, the existence of a distinctive female
voice and subject matter.” (Roseman, p 13)
In
A Room of One’s Own, Woolf chooses to
argue the idea that much of the literature written by women almost proves that
female authors are incapable of writing works as good as or better than their
male counterparts. By examining the historical period in which female authors
are judged, Woolf realizes the playing field is uneven, therefore contributing
to the lack of female literary accomplishments. By creating the fictitious
character Judith Shakespeare, which is used to compare and contrast the life of
William Shakespeare and how Judith’s life, in spite of her enormous talent,
would have been radically different simply because she is a woman. Whether for
impact or perhaps because of a woman’s inability to use her talent in a way
that would have helped her blossom during a period of time when a woman’s
contribution was dismissed, Woolf decides to have Judith end her own life as
described in this passage:
“Who shall measure the heat and
violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body? –
killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some crossroads. . . .” (p
897)
Cain, Finke,
Johnson, Leitch, McGowan, Sharpley-Whiting, and Williams, authors of The
Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism explain the significance of being buried at
a crossroads as the place where suicides “were often buried to prevent their
spirits from returning. Judith Shakespeare was buried at one of the intersections in London, where the tavern, The Elephant and Castle stood. (p 897)
Woolf wrote,
In reviewing
Shakespeare’s sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift
in the sixteenth century would have certainly gone crazed, shot herself, or
ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half
wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be
sure that a highly gifted girl whom had tried to use her gift for poetry would
have been thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder
by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to
a certainty. (898)
Women’s rights during the period to which Virginia Woolf is referring,
were non-existent. Woolf wrote the following in regard to women authors being
perceived as weak and powerless. The idea held in regard to Elizabethan women
was the culmination of all the historical and fiction literary works written,
to conceptualize for Woolf, a solution to understanding the female writer and
heroine, or lack thereof.
Judith Shakespeare was deprived of
an education, and although as talented as her brother, she was expected to follow societal norms, which was to marry and have children. But adhering to this
custom did not allow Judith the opportunities to grow and flourish, as either a
woman or an actor, thus, she ends her life. Woolf felt it “unthinkable that any woman
in Shakespeare’s day should have had Shakespeare’s genius.” It was considered
unimaginable that women, born to labor and serve, could exult such genius.
Woolf goes on, “Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must
have existed among the working classes.” It does not matter into what social
class one is born, if she was born with the gift to write or act, she should be
able to express this act, as a freedom of self-expression and as a way of life.
(pp 897-88)
During this time in history, women
were perceived as witches or lunatics, Woolf thinks “we are on the track of a
lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen.” And
she further surmises that the infamous “anonymous” author, surely must have
been a woman. For who else would have sung ballads to her children than a
mother on a long winter’s night. This shows the extent to which Woolf
contemplated woman’s peril. And add to this helplessness, the distractions and
obstacles one faced, a woman could not even have a room of her own. The
absence of intellectual females would have only compounded the helplessness
woman were made to feel. Unless a woman came from great wealth, she would have
neither the leisure time nor a place to write or be an artist. Woolf suspect’s
woman internalized the oppression and their desire to be educated. (p 898)
The depiction of Judith Shakespeare sheds light on the fact and the tragedy that wounded the heart of many intelligent women. In spite of the lack of history of women, the point of view in which Woolf writes, portrays Judith in a way she believed woman would have experienced life if they had tried to pursue life on their own terms. The societal and economic restrictions placed on many women provides for Woolf the reality she argues. Shakespeare’s genius was reserved for men who were able to pursue the type of literary life women could not because men were not deprived by society or of wealth. Moreover, Woolf ascertains that good art should not be hindered because of one’s circumstances.
Works
Cited:
Cain, Finke, Johnson, Leitch,
McGowan, Sharpley-Whiting, and Williams. The Norton
Anthology of
Theory & Criticism. 2nd Ed. Published by WW Norton and
Company, New
York/London. 2010.
Roseman, Ellen. A Room of One’s Own: Women Writers and the Politics of Creativity.
Twayne
Publishing, Inc. New York. 1995 (p 13).