Virginia Woolf and Feminist Aesthetics: a room of one's own

Summary

This lecture explores Virginia Woolf's feminist essay 'A Room of One's Own,' discussing the social and economic barriers women faced in literary history. Woolf argues for the necessity of financial independence and private space for women to write, and introduces the concept of a 'female sentence' to articulate women's voice and values. The lecture also touches on Woolf's vision of an androgynous aesthetic and her own literary aims.

Takeaways

• 📚 Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One’s Own' is a seminal feminist essay that explores the challenges and conditions necessary for women's writing.
• 👩‍💻 Woolf was a pioneer in feminist literary criticism, focusing on women's roles in history and their relationship with fiction.
• 🏛️ The essay argues for the social and economic conditions necessary for writing, which women have historically been denied.
• 📜 It discusses the lack of a tradition of women's writing, impacting those beginning to write in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• 💬 Woolf introduces the concept of a 'female sentence', a distinct style and subject matter that articulates women's voice and values.
• 🤔 The essay contemplates the ideal of an androgynous aesthetic, where authors write without gender awareness.
• 🎓 'A Room of One’s Own' originated from lectures Woolf gave at women's colleges in Cambridge on 'Women and Fiction'.
• 🚫 Woolf rejects the conventional lecture format, instead encouraging active exploration and thought from her audience.
• 📖 The essay is a blend of criticism, fiction, history, biography, and autobiography, making complex ideas accessible.
• 💭 Woolf emphasizes the need for women to have time, independence, and financial security to write, symbolized by '£500 a year and a room of one’s own'.
• 🌟 The essay calls for a new prose style that is expressive of women's minds, distinct from the language and values traditionally dominated by men.

Q & A

What is the main focus of Virginia Woolf's essay 'A Room of One's Own'?

The essay primarily focuses on the social and economic conditions necessary for women to write, the lack of a tradition of women's writing, the concept of a 'female sentence' that articulates women's voice and values, and the ideal of an androgynous aesthetic where an author writes free from an awareness of their sex.

Why is Virginia Woolf considered a pioneer of feminist literary criticism?

Virginia Woolf is considered a pioneer of feminist literary criticism because she was preoccupied with the role of women in history and their relationship with fiction throughout her writing life, continuously discussing the practice and difficulties of women's writing.

In what year was 'A Room of One's Own' published and what was the occasion for its creation?

'A Room of One's Own' was published in 1929. It was created as a result of two lectures Woolf was invited to give on 'Women and Fiction' at the women's colleges at Cambridge, Newnham and Girton, in 1928.

What does Woolf argue are the material circumstances that have historically prevented women from writing?

Woolf argues that before the nineteenth century, the demands of the domestic household, laws denying married women ownership of funds or property, and a lack of educational opportunity made it almost impossible for women to take up writing as a profession.

What is the significance of the '£500 a year and a room of one's own' mentioned by Woolf?

The '£500 a year and a room of one's own' represents the financial security and private space that Woolf believes are necessary for women to have the time and independence needed to write.

How does Woolf approach the challenge of 'writing as a woman' in her essay?

Woolf approaches the challenge by discussing the struggle women faced in the past when writing, often having to conform to cultural expectations of their gender. She also explores the idea of creating a 'female sentence' or a prose style that is expressive of a woman's mind, distinct from the language and values traditionally associated with men.

What is the role of the persona 'Mary' in 'A Room of One's Own'?

The persona 'Mary' is used by Woolf to narrate the essay. She is invited to give a lecture at a fictional women's college 'Fernham' and spends the essay researching and contemplating what she will say, allowing Woolf to explore complex ideas in a conversational and self-deprecating manner.

How does Woolf use the character of Mary Carmichael in the essay to illustrate her points about women's writing?

Mary Carmichael is an imaginary twentieth-century writer whose work is described as focusing on relationships between women and the minutiae of their daily lives. Woolf uses this character to illustrate the potential for women's writing to give voice to experiences that have been traditionally unrecorded or marginalized.

What does Woolf suggest is the task for women writers once they have achieved independence and financial security?

Woolf suggests that once women have achieved independence and financial security, the task is to fashion a life and a voice that is true to their own sex, not just modeled on a status quo developed according to the lives and voices of men.

How does Woolf's approach to writing in 'A Room of One's Own' differ from a conventional lecture?

Woolf's approach differs from a conventional lecture by refusing to offer a series of 'facts' for students to note down. Instead, she invites her audience to engage with her in exploring the problems of women's writing, using a conversational tone, anecdotes, and dramatized stories to introduce complex theoretical ideas.

What does Woolf mean by an 'androgynous aesthetic' and why is it significant in the context of her essay?

An 'androgynous aesthetic' refers to an ideal where an author can write without being constrained by their awareness of their sex as male or female. This is significant in the essay as it represents Woolf's vision for a more inclusive and less gender-biased approach to literature and artistic creation.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Introduction to Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own'

The lecture introduces Virginia Woolf's essay 'A Room of One's Own', which is a foundational text in feminist literary criticism. Published in 1929, the essay discusses the social and economic barriers that have historically prevented women from writing, the lack of a tradition of women's writing, and Woolf's concept of a 'female sentence'. Woolf argues for an androgynous aesthetic where authors write without gender consciousness. The essay originated from lectures Woolf gave at women's colleges in Cambridge, and it challenges the conventional format of academic lectures by engaging the audience in a reflective and exploratory dialogue rather than presenting definitive facts.

05:07

🎭 The Narrative Voice and Structure of 'A Room of One's Own'

This section delves into the narrative voice and structure of Woolf's essay. Woolf adopts the persona 'Mary' to explore the challenges and biases faced by women writers. Through 'Mary's' experiences at a fictionalized university, Woolf critiques the exclusion of women from academic spaces and the broader implications for women's contributions to literature. The essay is described as a blend of criticism, fiction, history, and autobiography, with Woolf using a conversational and accessible tone to engage with complex ideas. Despite the essay's humor and passion, Woolf was apprehensive about the critical reception, particularly from male critics, fearing her work would be dismissed as feminist polemic.

10:14

💭 Woolf's Reflections on Women's Writing and Cultural Representation

Woolf reflects on the historical scarcity of women writers in English literature, attributing this to material circumstances that made writing as a profession nearly impossible for women. She argues that women's economic, social, and political powerlessness has resulted in a cultural representation that privileges male experiences and marginalizes female ones. Woolf suggests that women need time, independence, and financial security to write, encapsulated in her shorthand of £500 a year and a room of one's own. The essay also addresses the aesthetic challenges of creating a truly female mode of writing, distinct from the male-dominated literary tradition.

15:21

📖 The Challenge of Writing as a Woman and the Need for a 'Female Sentence'

Woolf discusses the challenges women writers face in creating fiction, suggesting that writing as a woman involves different problems and qualities than writing as a man. She critiques the use of male language and values in literature, which often misrepresent women's experiences. Woolf calls for a new prose style that is expressive of women's minds, one that captures the nuances of women's lives and relationships. The essay includes quotes and examples that illustrate the need for a literature that authentically represents women's perspectives, which Woolf sees as a significant step towards women's freedom and achievement in writing.

20:33

🌟 Encouraging Women's Writing and Giving Voice to the Unrecorded

In the final part of the lecture, Woolf emphasizes the importance of giving voice to the unrecorded lives of women. She imagines a conversation with a fictional writer, Mary Carmichael, urging her to write about the everyday lives and relationships of women as they truly are. Woolf sees this as a feminist manifesto, encouraging women to explore and record the 'infinitely obscure lives' that have been silent for too long. The lecture concludes with a call to action for women writers to capture the realities of women's experiences, which Woolf believes is essential for a more inclusive and representative literature.

Keywords

💡Feminist literary criticism

Feminist literary criticism is a theoretical approach to literature that seeks to understand and interpret the role of gender in literary texts, as well as the representation of women in literature. Virginia Woolf is noted as a pioneer in this field, being preoccupied with the role of women in history and their relationship with fiction. The video script discusses Woolf's work 'A Room of One's Own,' which is a significant piece of feminist literary criticism, arguing for the need for women to have the social and economic conditions necessary for writing.

💡A Room of One's Own

'A Room of One's Own' is a long feminist essay written by Virginia Woolf, published in 1929. It is a foundational text in feminist literature and is discussed extensively in the script. The essay argues for the importance of financial independence and a private space for women writers, symbolized by 'a room of one's own.' It also explores the barriers women have faced in literary history and the need for a 'female sentence' or a writing style that authentically represents women's voices.

💡Female sentence

The 'female sentence' refers to a concept introduced by Woolf, suggesting a style and subject matter in writing that reflects women's voice and values, distinct from that of male writers. Woolf believed that women writers should develop a prose style that is expressive of their own minds and experiences, rather than adopting the language and values traditionally associated with male writers.

💡Androgynous aesthetic

An androgynous aesthetic is an ideal proposed by Woolf where an author writes without being conscious of their sex, transcending gender stereotypes in creative expression. This concept is mentioned in the script as Woolf's vision for a future where gender does not limit or define the writer's perspective or the content of their work.

💡Mary

In the script, 'Mary' is a persona adopted by Woolf to narrate 'A Room of One's Own.' She is invited to give a lecture at a fictional women's college, 'Fernham,' and the essay follows her experiences and reflections as she researches and contemplates the topic of women and fiction. This device allows Woolf to explore complex ideas through a more personal and relatable narrative.

💡Oxbridge

'Oxbridge' is a fictional representation of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England, used by Woolf in 'A Room of One's Own.' It serves as the backdrop for Mary's experiences and the discussions about women's position in academia and society, highlighting the real-world issues of gender inequality in these prestigious institutions.

💡Material circumstance

Material circumstance refers to the economic and social conditions that Woolf argues are necessary for writing. In the script, it is discussed how women have historically been denied these conditions, such as financial independence and educational opportunities, which has limited their participation in literature and the arts.

💡Cultural representation

Cultural representation in the context of the video refers to how women and their experiences are portrayed in literature, history, and society. Woolf critiques the dominance of male perspectives and experiences in cultural narratives, which has historically marginalized female voices and experiences.

💡Financial security

Financial security is a recurring theme in the script, emphasized by Woolf as a prerequisite for women's ability to write and express themselves creatively. She argues that without economic independence, women are unable to pursue writing as a profession or have the freedom to explore their own creative voices.

💡Private space

Private space, symbolized by 'a room of one's own,' is a concept introduced by Woolf to represent the need for women to have a personal, physical space where they can think, write, and create freely. This is discussed in the script as essential for women's intellectual and creative development, separate from the constraints of domestic and social expectations.

💡Writing as a woman

The phrase 'writing as a woman' is used in the script to discuss the unique challenges and perspectives that women writers face. Woolf explores how women writers have historically been judged by different standards or forced to adopt male writing styles to be taken seriously, and she advocates for the development of a more authentic female voice in literature.

Highlights

Introduction to Virginia Woolf's essay 'A Room of One's Own' and its significance in feminist literary criticism.

Woolf's focus on the role of women in history and their relationship with fiction.

The publication of 'A Room of One's Own' in 1929 and its key arguments on social and economic conditions necessary for women's writing.

Woolf's concept of a 'female sentence' as a distinct style and subject matter for women's writing.

The idea of an androgynous aesthetic where an author writes without gender awareness.

Woolf's approach to the essay, blending criticism, fiction, history, and biography.

The origin of 'A Room of One's Own' from Woolf's lectures at women's colleges in Cambridge.

Woolf's refusal to offer 'nuggets of truth' in her lectures, encouraging students to engage with her thought process.

The persona 'Mary' and her experiences at a fictionalized 'Oxbridge', highlighting the barriers women faced in academia.

Woolf's critique of the lack of women's representation in historical and fictional narratives.

The necessity for women to have financial security and private space to write.

Woolf's argument that women's economic, social, and political powerlessness has led to a marginalization of female experience in culture.

The challenge of 'writing as a woman' and creating a prose style expressive of women's minds.

Woolf's view on the need for women to fashion a life and voice true to their own sex, not just modeled on male-dominated status quo.

The importance of giving voice to the unrecorded lives and experiences of women.

Woolf's encouragement for women writers to explore and record the everyday lives of women as they really are.

Transcripts

For this taster lecture I’m going to give you a preview of a lecture that I give in

the first year, on the Prose module, on Virginia Woolf’s long feminist essay A Room of One’s

Own.

[also the frame text for second year optional module on the history of women’s writing

– Shakespeare’s Sisters]

Woolf herself was the pioneer of feminist literary criticism in the twentieth century.

She was hugely preoccupied throughout her writing life with the role of women in history

and with the relationship of women and fiction, and writing continuously about the practice

and the difficulties of women’s writing and of writing as a woman – in her diaries,

in letters, and in numerous reviews and essays, all of which have been published and are readily

available to us.

Woolf is a gift, basically, to any undergraduate or scholar, because she tells us so much about

the genesis and processes of her writing, all of which can be drawn into our understanding

of her work.

A Room of One’s Own was published in 1929, and makes a number of key arguments, in particular:

About the social and economic conditions necessary for writing, and the fact that women have

been denied these for much of literary history; About the consequent lack of a tradition of

women’s writing for those women beginning to write in the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries to draw upon; About the concept of a ‘female sentence’,

or in other words a style and subject matter that Woolf regards as articulating women’s

voice and values, and that is identifiably different to that of male writers [and this

is something that I will talk more about in the last part of this mini lecture];

And finally about the ideal, and it is only an ideal, that she has for an androgynous

aesthetic, in which an author would be able to write free from an awareness of their sex

as male or female.

What I want to do today is to introduce you to the style and approach of the essay, and

then to look particularly at what Woolf says about the possibilities for women’s fiction

in the twentieth century and implicitly perhaps, her own aims as a novelist.

A Room of One’s Own grew out of two lectures that Woolf was invited to give on ‘Women

and Fiction’ to the two women’s colleges at Cambridge – Newnham and Girton – in

1928.

Woolf was by now the author of six novels, and the colleges could be forgiven for thinking

that this was a subject that she would feel confident talking about – and of course

she is, but not perhaps in the conventional way that she imagines they expect.

And she begins by refusing quite bluntly to offer what she recognizes is generally assumed

to be the object of a university lecture – to impart a series of ‘facts’ for students

to scribble down and take away.

This is Woolf:

When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river

and began to wonder what the words meant.

They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen;

a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms

if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs

Gaskell and one would have done.

But at second sight the words seemed not so simple.

The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what

they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean

women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three

are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light.

But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting,

I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback.

I should never be able to come to a conclusion.

I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer

to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the

pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever.

Of course it is soon clear that not only is Woolf suspicious of so-called ‘nuggets of

truth’, but also that she wants the students listening to her to do more than simply note

down a few facts to regurgitate in an essay or exam.

Women and fiction, she says ‘remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems’

– and she invites her audience to join her, to engage with her, in exploring those problems,

to follow her train of thought as she researches, muses and ponders over the history of women’s

writing.

To do so she divests herself of the authoritative identity ‘Virginia Woolf, woman writer’,

and takes on the voice of a persona called ‘Mary’, who has been invited to give a

similar lecture to a thinly fictionalized women’s college ‘Fernham’, at a thinly

fictionalized university ‘Oxbridge’, and who actually spends the whole of the rest

of the essay researching and worrying about what she is going to say.

So the essay reopens, as it were, in the voice of Mary, as she is sat by a river that runs

along the edge of a male college, where she has been invited for lunch.

She is trying to plan her lecture and suddenly she senses/glimpses the beginnings of a thought

(thoughts, and characters, are always very ephemeral in Woolf’s writing – always

trying to slip away from her, difficult to catch).

As she is sort of metaphorically chasing it, still

not fully formed in her mind, she walks unconsciously across the college grass, to be immediately

stopped by a college official rushing towards her – only male scholars can walk on the

grass, women visitors must keep to the path.

The thought, in the meantime, has escaped.

She then decides to go to the library, to look up a manuscript, but she is stopped at

the door: ‘instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter

of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in

a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied

by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction’.

Mary is angry – but as she says: ‘That a famous library has been cursed by a woman,

is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library’ …

Now Woolf is a very skilful essayist and A Room of One’s Own continues in exactly this

way – accessible, very conversational in tone, very funny, very impassioned, very enticing

to read, deeply engaging.

It comments on real women writers, such as Aphra Benn, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte,

but it is also full of anecdotes, dramatized stories, satiric and tragic characters.

It is part criticism, part fiction, part history, part biography, part autobiography – and

in this way Woolf is able to introduce quite complex theoretical ideas in a way that is

never alienating, and polemical feminist ones in a manner that seems self-deprecating.

Nevertheless she expected a negative response amongst the largely male critical institution,

and awaited reviews with considerable nervousness: ‘I shall be attacked for a feminist’,

she noted in her diary, ‘I am afraid it will not be taken seriously’

Woolf is very wary of making any definitive assertions about women’s writing, or at

least in terms of its style or form.

Indeed much of the essay is taken up with her reflections on the lack of women’s writing

over the history of English literature, and the fact that there are so few women writers.

The reason for this, she argues very overtly, is because fiction is not just the result

of genius, but of material circumstance.

Prior to the nineteenth century, she argues, the demands of the domestic household, the

laws that denied married women ownership of funds or property, a lack of educational opportunity,

made it almost impossible for a woman to take up writing as a profession.

The creative voice of even the most gifted women would have remained mute, through want

of support, education and opportunity.

Women’s economic, social and political powerlessness, she declares, has then also resulted in centuries

of cultural representation that privilege things regarded important by men, and that

have conversely marginalised female experience.

As Mary browses the shelves of the British Library, she looks for the ways in which women

are represented, or not, in the books collected there.

History books, she finds, concentrate on the ‘great movements’ of government, empire

or scientific revolution, and are dominated by the actions and values of men.

Fiction by contrast seems to mythologise female characters in a manner that bears little relation

to reality.

This is Mary [Woolf]: ‘Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound

thoughts in literature fall from her lips’, she is talking of women characters in the

plays of Shakespeare, but ‘in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell,

and was the property of her husband’

Woolf’s conclusion, is that women need time and independence and freedom of thought if

they are to be able to write – and that these things depend on a certain degree of

financial security and of private space – in Woolf’s shorthand £500 a year and a room

of one’s own.

For Woolf this material basis is only the start however - and here the focus of her

argument shifts - from the material inequalities that limited women’s opportunity to write,

to the aesthetic problems of forging what Woolf imagines as a more truly female mode

of writing.

This is what I want to focus on for the remainder of the lecture.

Even once a women has the money and a room of her own to be able to write, Woolf thinks

(and she writes about this in various essays and reviews) the problem of ‘writing as

a woman’, of actually creating fiction remains.

And here she seems to be suggesting that to write as a women has different problems and

different qualities, to writing as a man.

In A Room of One’s Own, for example, Mary thinks about women novelists of the nineteenth-century,

such as the Brontes or George Eliot, and the struggle they faced in writing, knowing that

their work would be assessed according to the cultural expectations of their gender,

and pronounced sentimental or monstrous accordingly.

A woman writer might adopt a male pseudonym, for example, or wrote, so Mary/Woolf argues,

with a mixture of fear and anger, ‘admitting that she was “only a woman”, or protesting

that she was “as good as a man”’.

It was only in the twentieth century, Woolf thought, that the woman writer has begun to

mould what she describes as ‘a prose style completely expressive of her mind’.

Now, to explore what she means by this, I have given you a number of quotations on the

handout.

Previously, Woolf argues, women writers have only had available to them the language of

men, and this is very different, in its values, experience and interests, to that of women:

‘it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have

been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so.

Yet it is the masculine values that prevail.

Speaking crudely, football and sport are ‘important’; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes

‘trivial’.

And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war.

This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing- room.

A scene in a battle-field is more important than a scene in a shop – everywhere and

much more subtly the difference of value persists’.

The challenge then becomes the writing of a new kind of sentence – something Woolf

had already been interested in for a long time.

In a review from 1920 we see her quoting the words of Bathsheba Everdene from Hardy’s

Far From the Madding Crowd:

‘I have the feelings of a woman, but I have only the language of men’.

From that dilemma [Woolf notes] arise infinite confusions and complications.

Energy has been liberated [she is referring here to women over the age of 30 having been

granted the vote in 1918], but into what forms is it to flow?

To try the accepted forms, to discard the unfit, to create others which are more fitting,

is a task that must be accomplished before there is freedom or achievement’.

This is Woolf’s feminist manifesto really - once women have achieved independence, and

a right to property, education and their own money, how do they fashion a life, and a voice,

that is true to their own sex and isn’t just modeled on a status quo that has been

developed over centuries in accordance to the lives and voices of men.

It is a task that we might think Woolf sets herself.

In her very first novel The Voyage Out, one of the male characters, Terrence Hewett, a

writer, imagines writing a novel about the private lives of women:

‘I’ve often walked about the streets where people live all in a row and one house is

exactly like another house, and wondered what on earth the women were doing inside,’ he

said.

‘Just consider: it’s the beginning of the twentieth century, and until a few years

ago no woman had ever come out by herself and said things at all.

There it was going on in the background, for all these thousands of years, this curious

silent unrepresented life.

Of course we’re always writing about women – abusing them, or jeering at them, or worshipping

them; but it’s never come from women themselves.

I believe we still don’t know in the least how they live, or what they feel, or what

they do precisely’.

Mrs Dalloway is a novel that in many ways does exactly that, moving in and out of the

streams of consciousness of various female characters of the course of one ordinary day.

In A Room of One’s Own, when ‘Mary’ picks up a first novel by an imaginary twentieth-century

writer Mary Carmichael, she is struck to find that it is predominantly about relationships

between women, and about the minutiae of their daily lives:

‘It ranged, too, very subtly and curiously, amongst almost unknown or unrecorded things;

it lighted on small things and showed that perhaps they were not so small after all.

It brought buried things to light and made one wonder what need there had been to bury

them.’

She continues reading:

‘I wanted to see [she says] how Mary Carmichael set to work to catch those unrecorded gestures,

those unsaid or half-said words, which form themselves, no more palpably than the shadows

of moths on the ceiling, when women are alone, unlit by the capricious and coloured light

of the other sex’.

Thinking about the everyday life of London around her, she imagines herself in conversation

with Mary, encouraging her to write the lives of women as they really are:

‘All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael

as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination

the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women

at street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen

fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare’s words; or from

the violet-sellers and match-sellers and old crones stationed under doorways; or from drifting

girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women and the

flickering lights of shop windows.

All that you will have to explore, I said to Mary Carmichael, holding your torch firm

in your hand’.

Giving voice to the accumulation of unrecorded life.

This is perhaps the closest Woolf’s comes to offering a manifesto for women’s writing

- it is what Terrence Hewet imagines in The Voyage Out, what Woolf in part attempted

to do

in Mrs Dalloway, and what

she urges her listeners and readers to go on to

do

in

A Room of One’s Own.