One
"But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction - what has that to do with a room of one's own?"
A Room of One's Own begins with a question; and its first word is "But."
This suggests that what is to come is likely to be unconventional, contrary to expectation.
It also suggests that one comes to this discussion somewhat in media res, in the middle of things.
It's as if a conversation has been going on, and you are entering in the middle of it.
"But," one feminist critic has observed, suggests that you can't approach the subject of Women and Fiction innocently.
A story involving women and fiction has been going on for some time, and one can't tell an abstract version of it , a version that is completely independent of one's own relation to the phenomenon.
Indeed, in A Room of One's Own, Women and Fiction is explored by a woman who herself creates fiction, and this necessarily suggests a close connection between the speaker and what is said.
Not surprisingly, sometimes the narrator in A Room of One's Own expresses anger; sometimes she's sarcastic.
In the first chapter, for example, when the narrator is denied the opportunity to follow an intellectual fancy and she says:
That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is of complete indifference to a famous library. ... Never will I ask for that hospitality again ...
this isn't an abstract comment. It's one whose wit resonates with the hurt of undeserved rejection.
Moreover, the absence of abstraction is underlined by the A Room's expressive technique in which Woolf creates a fictional narrator who will relate how she came to have certain views; for this itself is an activity of women & fiction.
In A Room of One's Own, this is to say, Virginia Woolf, a woman who makes fiction, creates a fictional woman (Mary Beton or whomever, Woolf say that the name is of no importance) who tells how she came to have a view about women & fiction.
Women & Fiction, Woolf contends, is "a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions" and therefore a "fictional" - or what I'm calling a "non-abstract" - discussion of it "… is likely to contain more truth than is [a factual] discussion.]"
And this is how she proceeds .
Furthermore, beginning with the word "but" might well suggest something about the subject of the book itself.
"Butting in," one might say, is very much a focus of this work
The reason that a woman needs a room of her own to make fiction is because privacy and solitude - keeping the world from "butting in" - are necessary for creation. And the reader, at various points, is presented with what it's like to be "but in on," and nowhere more powerfully than in the first chapter.
As the narrator, in a wonderful passage, goes "fishing" in her mind while walking around "Oxbridge," she is confronted with a face of horror and indignation. Why such an expression? The answer, she says, is simple:
. .. he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path; only the [male] Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me.
No real harm was done, the narrator says; still, because of the interruption, her little thought had gone into hiding.
Such is the effect of having someone "but in on" you.
And one might assume that, if such interruptions are the common lot of those who don't have a room of their own and a sufficient income, it might well have an effect on their ability to create.
Woolf points out, at the opening of the work, that this is really the only "truthful opinion" that she has to offer about Women and Fiction.
She can, however, talk about, how she came to her view about the privacy and the money - and this provides the work's structure:
A Room of One's Own might be seen as a kind of cultural odyssey where we experience someone moving past different landmarks toward a settled place, or in this case, a settled opinion. And following her through the journey - noting her stops and the different ways that her experience can be interpreted - may be the best way to understand it
For as one comes to see early on, passage through the waters of Women and Fiction can be difficult, in part because the subject is open to various interpretations.
In the first chapter of A Room, Woolf distinguishes several of them
Her initial perspective is straightforward.
To speak about women and fiction is simply to speak about certain women writers: "a few remarks about Fanny Burney," for example, "a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontes, etc. ..."
And this will certainly be ONE way in which Woolf thinks in A Room, although she won't restrict herself to actual writers, but will also consider an imaginary writer, named Mary Carmichael, and even an imaginary would-be writer, Shakespeare's sister.
But Woolf's narrator goes on to distinguish other meanings to the subject.
"Women and Fiction" could mean: "Women and what they are like."
This, I think, refers to women in general: what women are like - what constitutes their nature - and one might consider how what women are like affects the fiction that they read.
Alternatively, and probably of more interest to a woman who writes, it might refer to how what women are like affects the fiction they create.
In the course of A Room, Woolf will suggests that women have a distinct nature that affects how they should write owing to what she will metaphorically refer to as the distinctive "shape "of their brains; and she will also claim superiority for those women who were able to right without be restricted by a male- originated literary style.
Finally, there is a third interpretation for Women and Fiction: it might be taken to mean "Women and the fiction that is written about them."
The spotlight here is directed to women as the subject of fiction.
What sort of fiction is created ABOUT women?
And to might there be a difference in the sort of fiction which is about women when it is created by women create rather than by men.
In Aristotelian terms, women might be considered the material cause of fiction, the stuff from which some fiction is made; the efficient cause, what makes some fiction; or the formal cause, a special character that some fiction has.
Throughout the text, Woolf will often consider these different interpretations, as she says, "inextricably mixed together." And she will conclude the first Chapter with a fictional personal experience, the description of two imaginary meals - one at a women's college, the other at a men's - as a way of depicting the educational situation of those women at her time, including that of those who might some day create fiction.
At the women's college, the narrator says, "Dinner was not good." It consisted of plain soup, beef, cabbages, and potatoes, followed by prunes and custard. The water jug, she says, was liberally passed around.
The situation at the men's college was quite different.
Here there was sole and partridges "with all their retinue of sauces and salads," followed by a [notable] confection . . . while the glasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled,," with the result that "there was lit" halfway down her spine," what she describes as the "... subtle subterranean glow of rational discourse."
Good food and drink, Woolf suggests, appropriately accompany rational discourse and they are emblematic of the material conditions that support education.
The difference between the two meals symbolizes the difference between the educational opportunities that have existed for men and for women. And these differences have a notable effect on the capacity to produce fiction, since later on Woolf will note that a formal education is almost always the possession of great writers - but for most of history women were excluded from most formal education.
Women, the narrator observes, would naturally have been expected to take an interest in the education of their sisters, and to create colleges for them. However, women unable to do so to any great extent because they typically lacked the necessary independent means . Indeed, she says, "making a fortune and bearing thirteen children - no human being could stand it."
The narrator concludes the first chapter by thinking about "how unpleasant it is to be locked out... and how it's worse perhaps to be locked in;" about the safety and prosperity of the one sex and the poverty and insecurity of the other; and of the effect of tradition and the lack of tradition on the mind of the writer.
These thoughts will remain with her throughout the book, and with them, she leaves
"Oxbridge."
Introduction |
Two |
Three |
Four |
Five |
Six |
Conclusion
© copyright 2005. Joel Rich. All rights reserved
