Abyss Notes on Woolf's A Room of One's Own

Elisa Kay Sparks
Clemson U
Fall 1998

Abyss Notes/ Reading Guide for

Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own

Background/ Gliederung

The book as a whole is Woolf's exploration of the situation of the woman writer -- why there have been so few "great" women writers and what conditions would be necessary for a woman to be a writer. Her central contention -- that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (4) -- is developed through an apparently random but actually skillfully crafted series of meditations.

In Chapter One she addresses the problems of women's relative lack of education. Set at a women's college in "Oxbridge", this chapter points out how comparatively recent has been women's access to education and how little money has been spent on it.

Chapter Two takes place in the British Museum -- one of the few libraries to which women had free access. Here she tries to find an answer to her questions by consulting the reams of commentary on women written by men.

In Chapter Three she begins a historical trek back through the traditions established by those women who actually did write by musing on why we have so few women writers before the eighteenth century. This chapter contains the celebrated account of the life of "Judith Shakespeare," the bard's hypothetical sister.

Chapter Four continues Woolf's history of women writers into the 18th and 19th centuries, including her admiration for Jane Austen's disinterestedness and her discomfort at Charlotte Bronte's anger.

Chapter Five is Woolf's meditation on the creative possibilities in store for "Mary Carmichael," a hypothetical 20th century woman writer.

Chapter Six ends the book with Woolf's synthesizing (and some would say question-begging) evocation of the powers of the androgynous mind.

Questions about Critical Perspectives

Which of the four orientations of criticism does Woolf talk about the most? What is most important to her: the way that art imitates reality, how the audience responds to art, the processes the writer goes through to produce art, or the structure and content of the work itself?

MIMESIS -- what is art's relationship to reality for Woolf? Is art a mirror or a lamp for her? Can you find any passages that tell you what she thinks art imitates?

RHETORIC -- how important is art's effect on its readers to Woolf? What kind of an effect does it seem to have? According to her, what kinds of art have the greatest effect(s)?

THE ARTIST -- how does Woolf see the creative process? What is needed to be creative? What blocks creativity? What are the relative roles of tradition and of the individual talent?

THE WORK -- as a Modernist, Woolf should have some stress on the text as an object, a thing in itself, autotelic. Do you find traces of this ideal of impersonality?

Questions and Annotations: Chapter by Chapter

Chapter One

What larger purpose do her self-effacing introductory remarks serve? What kind of a stance is she taking towards "truth" and towards masculine definitions of truth?

NB> note how nugget/stone/coin imagery gets developed. What is the feminine opposite of this kind of masculine imagery? Watch for image patterns throughout -- especially patterns of opposition.Watch for doors too.

7 What does Milton stand for as an artist? Look for references to Milton throughout.

11 What do you do with the cat without a tail?

12 Quote from Tennyson is from The Princess, a poem about how a scheme for women's education fails due to women's need for husbands and children.

12 What does the war seem to symbolize for Woolf? Look for war references throughout.

18 Mary Seton: fellow of women's college; science teacher

Chapter Two

Notice refs to war and Mussolini. In 1929 Woolf was awfully prescient about what fascism meant and was going to mean.

Why does Woolf think men are angry? What are the feminist elements in her arguments?

37 Mary Beaton: Aunt who left her legacy.

NB: Women got the vote in England in 1918; in USA in 1920. Why is money more important than the vote to Woolf?

Chapter Three

43/41 Note reference to Shakespeare. Is he the opposite of Milton? Why does Woolf admire Shakespeare so much?

45 What's Woolf's attitude towards conventional kinds of history?

46/44 "her husband's property": It wasn't until the middle/end of the C19th that laws were passed which gave women the rights to custody of their children, to sign contracts, or to own property, inccluding wages earned.

What does an artist need to be creative? What did Judith Shakespeare lack?

55/53 What's going on in the attack on Mr. Oscar Browning?

Chapter Four

What was it that women writers of the 17th and 18th centuries lacked?

Why does Woolf like Jane Austen so much? What's wrong with Charlotte Bronte?

How does Woolf's preference for transcendent, non-emotional art square with the perspec tives and concerns of feminism?

Chapter Five

What is wrong with the impulse to autobiography, according to Woolf?

84/80 Mary Carmichael: contemporary woman writer

86/82What is so important about "Chole liked Olivia"?

Chapter Six

First four pages are a kind of attempt at synthesis. What oppositions is she synthesizing? Try reading these pages as a kind of prose poem, paying attention to imagery etc.

Some critics see this final chapter's emphasis on androgyny as a cop-out. What do you think?

Notice how she brings together many strands of the book at the end: Mussolini, Milton, Shakespeare.