This book blew my mind, you guys. I've always sort of avoided Woolf because ugh, feminists. But that is a stupid reason, and I am going to go burn my bra now.
Woolf's premise is that a woman needs money and a room of her own to be able to write. Because even though
in our minds artists scribble away in drafty garrets while gnawing stale bread, most of The Big Ones (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelly, Tennyson, Arnold) were university-educated with the attendant funds, and those who weren't were still usually well-to-do. Even the ones that
were scribbling away in garrets had, at least, a garret of their own. Because a room of one's own gives you the space to ensure that what you're saying is what you actually mean, and having your own money gives you the ability to say whatever it is you mean without fear of reprisal.
everyone's favorite penniless writer
And she touches on one of my pettest peeves and secretest fears: Lady Writers and Why They Are So Bad. The reason lady-authors are so silent in history is because they were busy having the children and bathing the children and feeding the children and dying from the having of the children, and the reason they were so terribly bad at it when they finally started writing is both because they were using tools made
by men
for men, and because they were so fixated on being women. And it's so incredibly satisfying to have someone take something you've always (sort of shamefully) held to be true, and give you a solid reason for why it might be. She has this great line that I didn't underline and can't now find again, about women writing
as women having forgotten that they
are women. By which she means not being so damned angry at all the ways they've been oppressed, and getting on with telling the story. *high-fives Woolf's tombstone*
And she is so bloody genial. She isn't preaching to the choir; she is gently and persuasively reasoning you around to her way of thinking, and it is
oddly endearing. I want to take tea with her, and have her slip a little something stronger into my cup.
I can't write this review without saying super-hokey things like:
A Room of One's Own helped me start to see how far we've come, and how far we have yet to go. Lame, right? But it gave me a clearer view into lady-writers of the past and more hope for lady-writers of the future.
Nine caterpillars.
