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Emily Skardon

Mrs. Ostdiek

English 2040

9 May 2017

A Room of One's Own Critique

Gender has long been an obstacle for women in the workforce, due to the perception that

males are superior. In the book A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf critiques this system.

Woolf's commentary regarding female writers takes a feminist standpoint through a first person

narrator. She states that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write

fiction,” which is the thesis to Woolf’s argument. The book is about feminism and about how

women need their own space just as much as men.

The narrator is a woman that attends a prestigious university called Oxbridge. She seems

to constantly be in a state of contemplation which is always interrupted by some outside source.

Once the train of thought is lost, it generally is not regained. Woolf is trying to prove a point that

women need their own space to think without interruptions to succeed in life. The text shifts in a

different direction when the narrator sees a cat without a tail which once again causes her to lose

her train of thought which shows the reader what it is like to be a writer as a woman. It

emphasizes that women cannot compete against men when it comes to writing because men are

given their own space while women are constantly being watched over. A lack of alone time

caused the quality of women's writing to suffer. The room that Woolf is wanting so terribly for

herself and other women not only gives women their own space but also stands for freedom and

financial independence, which women lack because of gender inequality during this time. The

narrator states that, “intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon
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intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but

from the beginning of time . . .” which is why she finds so many women have written

unsuccessful poetry. It is easier for women to write novels because the starts and stops that come

along with interruption does not affect a novel as much because there are many different parts,

whereas poetry needs to be a constant flow of thought.

Woolf created her own writing style, which was very uncommon during this time because

there were not very many women writers who were successful let alone create their own writing

style. Many men in the early 1900’s did not believe that women could or should even be allowed

to write. Woolf does not stick to the traditional writing style, but she adds in her own twist by

adding interruptions throughout the text. She states that Mary, the narrator, has “every right…if

she does them not for the sake of breaking, but for the sake of creating,” she is creating

something new and adding it to the style of her writing. By creating her own style of writing in

the early 20th century, it shows how strong and independent of a woman she was even though

there were many people, especially men that did not think she could do it. Woolf believed that if

a woman felt grievance about the status of herself and other women, then her writing was to be

doomed. This shows how confident and independent Woolf was, she had nobody holding her

back and could rely on herself for financial needs.

Although gender has always been an issue and today still is an issue in the workforce,

there have been a handful of women that have fought this truth and stood out against the rest.

Woolf is one of those women that did not give up. She did not care what others thought of her in

the early 20th century, with no man to financially support her. The creation of her own writing

style, she was a breakthrough for women writers all around the world.