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Virginia Woolf; Analysis of "A Room of One's Own"

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Submitted By JayG
Words 2167
Pages 9
Julia Ehana
Ms. Jordan Sells
ENGL 110
11th April, 2013
The Truth Behind The Fiction; Virginia Woolf’s Thoughts
The strive for gender equality did not just begin when women decided to take up their pitchforks and sticks in contest at some town square somewhere in an European village; the expression of desire for a society of androgynous minds began in much subtler forms such as writing. Simply putting down in ink how one felt or perceived the world in the old days was all a woman could do, at least, without prosecution, if she had any “money and a room of her own” (Woolf 21). Perhaps that was what Virginia Woolf had been thinking whilst writing her book, A Room of One’s Own (1929). Woolf wrote her books in a time where only men deserved to be scholars, have respectable jobs, titles and earn reasonable amounts of money, whereas women would take up meager jobs and earn little or no money; thus limiting the public voice they had to express themselves. She therefore tried to leave a legacy or sort of encouragement for women who despite these unfortunate circumstances, wished to express themselves in a scholarly manner such as writing. By stating that a woman needed money, “five hundred a year”, and a room of her own (Woolf 21&40), Woolf simply implied empowerment and privacy; as the former was that which women greatly lacked and the latter was an abode in which one could peacefully, without restrictions or disturbances, express the mind as well as the soul. Woolf kept from making a definite conclusion that would limit a reader’s mind to one direction of thought and this made clear when she states “No opinion has been expressed, you may say… That was done purposely” (40). Reading her text from the book, Cultural Conversations; The Presence of the Past, this is a statement which anyone —even the context authors — would agree with. For it is still overwhelmingly

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