"A Room on One's Own"

Paper Summary:

In 1928, Virginia Woolf was asked to speak on the topic of "women and fiction". This paper examines the result, based upon two essays she delivered at Newnham and Girton that year, which was "A Room of One's Own," an extended essay on women as both writers of fiction and as characters in fiction. This paper examines the main point she offers in this work, which is that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. The paper also presents a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the book.

From the Paper:

"In Chapter 3, Woolf offers the idea of an imaginary character by the name of Judith Shakespeare, who is the fictional sister of William Shakespeare. It is very possible that Judith is as intelligent as her brother, but the only education that she receives is the one that she gives herself. What little she does write she chooses to hide or burn in fear of getting caught. Woolf mentions a bishop who declared that it was impossible for women, past, present or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. She goes on to say, "Be as it may, I could not help thinking, as I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare" (Woolf 46)."

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