Sunday, April 16, 2023

A Room of One's Own or 114 Pages of Excuses Concerning Why I Can't Write Today


(The most objective book description I could find online): A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled "Women and Fiction", and hence the essay, are considered non-fiction. The essay is generally seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.


I have so many thoughts and mixed feelings about this essay. While I don't think stream of consciousness is really my thing when it comes to preferred reading; I find myself writing this way often, so I've come to understand a couple things. Firstly, when one is writing in this sort of way, one tends to contradict oneself. Secondly, the reader is required to pay a good amount of attention a good deal of the time---and that can be difficult. 


If Woolf is allowed to write in such an eruption of thoughts, I will feel free to respond in kind. 


Concerning the "Feminism" of this piece: I believe that if today’s feminists read the whole thing, instead of a few snippets in a college anthology, they’d find that Woolf is not necessarily pleading their case here. Her narrator might be a sort of whiny entitled one at times, but I think Woolf's point of view is clear at the end. While she lays out a good case for the difficulties formerly faced by women writers, and points out how there's still work to be done, she also lists quite a few reforms that have been made since long before her audience came of age. She’s not complaining about the lack of opportunity for women so much as she’s upset about the lack of women taking the opportunity.


What constitutes opportunity is a matter of opinion. Some say the opportunity lies in the freedom a childless, single woman has to do what she wants with her time---in this case, writing; while others say opportunity is being taken care of by a doting husband while raising a family. I’ve been blessed with both a doting husband/family and the freedom to do what I want with my time. 


I do have means and a room of my own---this book stirs in me the feeling of obligation to make more use of it for the sake of all the other women who didn’t and don't.


In today's society, I don't think our options are either singleness and freedom or being strapped to a family schedule. There’s a third option: marry a man who values your brain, creativity, and time. Train your children to respect your creative time and, better yet, make some of their own. A large amount of children are not the problem. Mismanaged time, selfish husbands, lousy parenting, these might be the problem. So ladies, choose wisely. When my husband is off work, he occupies the children so I can write or film. He values my mind, ministry, and interests. I value them, too, and I'm not afraid to make my needs known. Women of a century ago may not have had this choice, but the women of today do and using this essay as a rant for today is silly, entitled, and difficult to take seriously.


She alluded to men who go to the office at ten and come home at half past four to do what they want. This is not impossible, ladies. Train your children! Establish a schedule! Take control over your time so you can do this too. Obviously these men “trained” those around them---do the same!


In Woolf’s day it may have been a lack of opportunity, but today it's apathy. But, maybe then too.

Without thinkers like Woolf, both men and women, we wouldn’t have opportunities now. But one must have the desire and see the value to think those thoughts. Some didn’t fight then because they didn’t care. Some don’t utilize opportunities now because they have other opportunities to care about. The more time I spend on eternal things, the less I care about these “scholarly” things that once seemed so important to me. Still, the need for quiet writing time is one I struggle to suppress. The guilt of taking time from my family battles with the guilt of taking time from myself, no matter how well trained anyone is.


In my opinion, writing (or any other creative pursuit) is a privilege to be enjoyed after your work is done. If you are provided for, you probably have children to care for. If you provide for yourself, you must do that work first. Who provided for Virginia Woolf? It sounds like she and her husband worked together on their publishing company and didn’t make a whole lot of money. She might have been "poor" in her own eyes, but the woman literally had her own writing cottage. Please.  


I think if you want to write, you make time to write. No excuses. Woolf mentions Jane Austen several times. Jane Austen had neither 500 pounds a year nor a room of her own to write in. She wrote at a lap desk in her family's sitting room and listened for the creaking door to alert her to hide what she was working on. 


Rather than some kind of amazing bit of, "let's free women" literature, I see this more as, “114 pages of excuses concerning why I can’t write today." A writer writes for herself, regardless of where that piece of writing ends up after she's completed it.


Still, if one wants to make money off it nowadays, there are no excuses. I'm a homeschooling mother of nine and have made good money off my writing when I desired to. I have several friends who are doing the same.


While I'm annoyed with modern young college women who read this and somehow feel they relate with Mary Beton/Seton/Carmichael, I feel like I want to read this once a year to try to be more relatable to women who do not have the opportunities that I and they do.


Favorite quote: “It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”


This book meets the following challenges: Alphabet Soup Challenge for "R" and The Classics Club.


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