Virginia Woolf: Why Should Women Write?

Virginia Woolf:
Why Should Women Write?

In Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own, she is asked to speak about women and fiction. Woolf begins by addressing limitations of women writers of the past, and draws on those works of literature in order to bring awareness to the present relationship of women and fiction in 1928. Throughout her essay, she quickly realizes that the prominence of women in fiction is very little, and she has “no arm to cling to” (149). According to Woolf, before her time it was very difficult to write fiction without the material things that she describes – money and a room of one’s own. Her exploration into women in fiction quickly turns into a call for action, because there are no longer any excuses for women to not write fiction. Any woman who possesses a desire to write can become a forerunner for future generations of writers as long as they have money and a room of their own.
Before Woolf’s time, women have not had much opportunity to own property or possess any money earned through means of work. Not long before Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own, “the law denied [women] the right to possess what money they earned” (29). Anything earned by the woman is given to the husband. This limitation of power in society prevents women the freedom to attain a room of their own that is free from distraction, unless the husband provides it. However, women in 1928 now have many great opportunities that were previously unattainable, as Woolf states, “there must be at this moment some two thousand women capable of earning over five hundred a year in one way or another” (147). This means that women are no longer bound to the actions of their husbands. Woolf says that “the excuse of lack of opportunity, training, encouragement, leisure and money no longer holds good” (147), and young woman with excuses are “disgracefully ignorant” (146). Woolf believes that any woman can break from her traditional role as a woman in society, which is full of distractions, and acquire the necessary material things which intellectual freedom depends on.
Woolf identifies that intellectual freedom depends on material things when she states that “a woman must have money and a room of one’s own if she is to write fiction” (4). Although this statement does not account for nor address the true nature of women or of fiction, it is necessary for material items to be secured for women to inspire future women writers with confidence that they can write fiction. The narrator in A Room of One’s Own is given five hundred British pounds per year by her aunt, which gives the narrator a sense of independence and power. This heavily emphasizes the importance of material things, as the narrator finds herself holding the money in higher regard than women’s recent right to vote. This sense of power and opportunity begs women to “live in the presence of reality” (144), and create an “influence [that they] can exert upon the future” (145).
The right to use to these material items is necessary to provide an environment where women are able to access their ability to “think poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment” (57). However, it is unlikely that today women need the same attachment to material things in order to write fiction. It is only by acquiring material things that women in Woolf’s time will begin the literary tradition for women in following generations. Beginning the process of writing, free of excuses, will allow future generations of women writers to flourish. Any woman who possesses a desire to write can become an “arm to cling to” (149) for women of fiction as long as they have the access to power and space to contemplate.

Bibliography
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Bibliography: Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.