A Room of One's Own

This is the second time I have read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Each time I read this pseudo-story/essay, the phrase “poverty of our sex” stands out (Norton Anthology 2102). With this phrase, Woolf combines two instances of hardship: the lack of money—and inherent low quality of life—and the oppression of the female gender. The combination of these two elements really comes to life in this line: “Every penny I earn […] will be taken from me and disposed of according to my husband’s wisdom […] so that to earn money, even if I could earn money, is not a matter that interests me very greatly. I had better leave it to my husband” (2103). With this quote, we can see how men oppressed women even WITH money; in this respect, there seems to be a never-ending cycle of subjugation between money and the women of the era about which Woolf speaks, and it seems this would be especially true of the POOR women of the time. Being women, they already encounter oppression, and with little or no money in the family bank, such oppression would increase exponentially. Of course, we must remember that women in lower-class families would probably do more, and thus perhaps even control money in some instances, unlike the “rich brat” of the upper class, who has everything handed to her. We should also remember that these aspects of society do not simply disappear in our time, and we should examine them more closely in EITHER time. However, due to the space and time constraints of this short assignment, we will not be able to go into more detail. Finally, it is important to note Woolf’s use of her own streams of consciousness, the thoughts that lead her to the following conclusion: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (2092; emphasis mine). Woolf’s streams of consciousness carry the story for over fifty pages (in the Norton), and they give insight into Woolf’s revelation—examples and proof as to why women, in her view, live and work in abject poverty. One such example is when Woolf goes to the library and realizes that men wrote the bulk of the books there, and a lot of them are even about women, but women have had little/no agency to write similar books about men (2105).