A Room of One's Own
"Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
Welcome to our month of Virginia Woolf! In addition to reading and discussing To the Lighthouse together, we are also breaking form from Short Story Club to read a seminal piece of feminist critique for Nonfiction November with Woolf's extended essay “A Room of One’s Own.” This dense and layered critique originated from two different lectures Woolf gave at women’s colleges at the University of Cambridge. In it, Woolf uses the space of the page to explore and consider what is holding women back from being forefront contributors to society and culture, especially in literary history.
You definitely don’t have to read Woolf’s text in order to listen to our episode, nor do you have to read it in its entirety. You can listen along with plenty of literary enthusiasm while we bring our Big English Teacher energy and dig into Woolf’s rich prose with some close reading while pulling out key takeaways for our fellow readers. We’ll chat about all of Woolf’s thoughts on authors she includes in her essay (is she the OG Austen fangirl?), and her contemporaries as well as her unabashed love of Shakespeare and imagining of Judith Shakespeare, Will’s fictional sister. Plus, we share our own experiences reading and teaching the text, consider some of the limitations of Woolf’s work, and give a few book recommendations to pair with today’s discussion.
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The Life of Virginia Woolf
One could say that part of Woolf’s inspiration for her fiction and nonfiction was a direct result of her upbringing. Born Adeline “Virginia” Stephen, Woolf was the third child in Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth’s marriage, an upper-middle-class family in London with literary ties during the “stern, and pompous” Victorian era. Stephens was the editor of the first Dictionary of National Biography (and former son-in-law to William Thackery) and ensured his children’s future by securing formal educations for his sons at Cambridge, and private tutors for Virginia. Woolf’s upbringing would influence her decision to join the Bloomsbury group with their unorthodox beliefs, and as biographer Hermonie Lee states in her biography,
“Woolf was a ‘modern’. But she was also a late Victorian. The Victorian family past filled her fiction, shaped her political analyses of society and underlay the behaviour of her social group.”
Woolf’s young life was also full of sorrow. At age 13, Woolf mother passed from rheumatic fever, causing Woolf to suffer a mental breakdown—occuring again in 1904 with the death of her father. Leaving Woolf in a debilitating condition for months, she remained confined to her bed and was given barbiturates to control episodes of suicidal ideation. Over time, scholars came to believe that Woolf most likely suffered from bipolar disorder.
Woolf began her career teaching English literature and history and writing articles and reviews for publications such as The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, and The National Review. It was during this time that Woolf became friends with men who shared similar interests including Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, and Leonard Woolf. With weekly meetings to discuss literature and the arts, the unofficial Bloomsbury group was born.
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Woolf would go on later to marry Leonard Woolf, though both found early on in their marriage that their attraction to each other was platonic and not romantic. Yet, Virginia and Leonard remained married and accepted an open marriage as Virginia explored her attraction to women and had relationships most notably with Vita Sackville-West. Leonard, in part, was a caretaker for Virginia, supporting her during her illness and cheering on her writing career. The two also opened Hogarth Press, which predominately published other Bloomsbury writers including Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and the first English translations of Sigmund Freud. (They rejected James Joyce’s Ulysses.)
As the Bloomsbury group began to disperse and the death of some of its members, Woolf’s life began to crumble. Coupled with disillusionment at the Second World War and the strain of editing her last novel Between the Acts, Woolf began to feel that she had lost her art and could no longer write. After writing a letter clearly explaining her reasons and resolve to end her life to her husband, Woolf walked half a mile to the River Ouse, filled her pockets with rocks, and walked into the water. Her body was found almost a month later on April 18th, 1941. At this time Woolf was a widely known public figure and a best-selling author. Her passing was felt deeply around the world.
Coming Up on Novel Pairings
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Final Words
Readers, we hope you enjoyed today’s episode. We’d love to hear about your reading experience with Woolf, a quote that stood out from her essay, or what key takeaway you left with after listening to our discussion.
Until then, we declare after all, there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book.
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