A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN
(Chapter One)
In discussing A Room of One's Own and its subject, Women and Fiction, we can begin by observing that in this work a woman who creates fiction - i.e., Virginia Woolf - is examining women and fiction.
There is a reflexiveness inherent in this work.
What are some of the implications of this reflexive relationship?
What are its potentially positive - or negative - consequences?
How might it inform how we approach the text?
Woolf indicates that she will not be exploring "truth" in A Room but only how she came to her opinion about a woman's need for money and a room of her own to create fiction. And she suggests that truth is at best very difficult to attain when one is considering controversial questions about sex (or gender.)
What is Woolf getting at in her distinction between truth and opinion?
Are questions about sex or gender more easily objects of opinion than of truth?
If so,why?
The situation is made even more interesting by the fact that Woolf chooses to present her opinions - or more accurately, how she came to her opinions - as a "fictional" account, i.e., Virginia Woolf, a woman who creates fiction, creates as a narrator a fictional woman as the vehicle whereby she will explore her opinions about women and fiction.
What are some of the implications of this perspective? In what sense will Woolf be speaking "lies?"
Why does the name of the narrator not matter?
Consider the passage in this chapter in which the narrator describes thinking as "letting her line down" into her mind in order to catch a small fish. And then having her "fish" scurry away when she is interrupted.
How would you characterize the imagery that Woolf uses here to describe the process of thinking?
What is Virginia Woolf suggesting by juxtaposing this imagery with the description of how the narrator was affected by the protector of male privilege?
There is another passage in Chapter One where the narrator experiences the limitations of male privilege on the intellect: when she is barred from the university library. Her response here is strong:
"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 I vowed ... in anger."
What are some of the effects on women that might be expected from their being alienated from the repositories of intellectual history.
What might some of the effects be on men from such exclusion?
One of the most memorable sets of passages in A Room is Woolf's contrast in Chapter One of the meals the narrator experienced at the men's and women's colleges.
(In passing, Woolf's noting that what is eaten is rarely mentioned in fictional accounts reminds the instructor of Mark Twain's noting at the beginning of one of his works that "there will be no weather in what follows. The limited perspective of fictional worlds is itself a potential subject of interest. This subject might be linked to - or might be independent of - a gender perspective.)
Woolf is very sensitive to effect of the external world on the process of creativity and we will continually experience her viewing, especially women, writers from this perspective.
Potentially, what are some of the effects of being educated in a less - or more - opulent atmosphere?
What's implied by taking this perspective on writing?
How does it differ from other perspectives that one might take?
"WOMEN AND FICTION"
(from Women and Writing)
This essay by Virginia Woolf was published in March of 1929 - in the period between when she gave the lectures on which A Room of One's Own is based (October 1928) and when she published A Room (October 1929.) It expresses many of A Room's themes in a more expository form.
Among Woolf's interesting observations in this essay is "the immense effect of environment and suggestion upon the mind" and especially on the mind of the writer.
For example, she believes that it is important to see the life of early women writers in the context of the environment of most women ("The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life ... the number of her children ... whether she had money of her own ... can we account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.")
She also explores in this context a theme that continually interests her: the effect of the range of women's experience on the character of women's writing.
("Nineteenth century novels ... were profoundly influenced by the fact that the women who wrote them were excluded by their sex from certain kinds of experience ... [they] were written by women from whom was forcibly withheld all experience save that which could be met in a middle class drawing room.")
What are some of the negative effects of women having a relatively narrow range of experience upon which to draw?
Are there any positive effects?
Other important themes in the essay include:
- the effect of resentment of how women are treated upon writing by women;
(Woolf's belief that expressing personal resentment in one's writing - e.g., about injustices that women suffer - is a "distortion" and "the cause of weakness" is contrary to the view of many.
Why does Woolf believe this?)
- the need for women to create a kind of sentence that is distinctly different in "form" from that which men use to create fiction (Women must make a new kind of sentence for herself, "altering and adapting the current sentence until she writes one that takes the natural shape of her thought without crushing or distorting it.")
This last observation might be seen as among the most provocative and puzzling within Woolf's exploration of Women and Fiction. It appears in somewhat different aspects in virtually all of the works we examine in this course. Central to the perspective is the notion that men's and women's minds importantly differ, and that therefore their writing - at its best - will be significantly different in form.
In what ways might one say that minds differ based on gender (and independent of environment?)
What are some of the implications of this idea on how we should approach writing by women?
Does it have implications for how we should approach writing by men?
ORLANDO
(Chapter One)
It's always useful to begin looking at work by considering its title. However, the significance of Woolf's introducing "Orlando" at the outset is unclear (at least to the instructor.)
Perhaps, however, it's meant to remind the reader of Orlando Inamorato (Roland in Love) the unfinished epic about the hero of the Charlemagne legend written in 1487 by the Italian poet, Boiardo. This poem inspired Orlando Furioso (The Madness of Roland) by the 16th century poet, Ariosto.
If one were to take such epics as influencing Woolf's choice, what would that imply about the work?
What might one expect it to be about? (One can begin to answer such a question with only a superficial knowledge of the epics.)
Moving to the work itself, one can notice at the outset how gender is immediately introduced in the opening sentence ("He ...") We are asked to be aware of the reality of Orlando's gender ("no doubt") at the same time as we are aware of how the appearance of gender can be deceiving (disguised by fashion.)
Does the appearance and reality of gender in the first sentence also attach to the description of Orlando's activity at hacking at the head?
What is the significance of Woolf opening the work with such a dramatic image of Orlando?
This difficulty of distinguishing between the appearance appearance and the reality of gender is notably presented later in Chapter One in the description of Orlando's first experience of Sasha, the Russian princess. As in opening sentence, the reality of Sasha's gender is masked by the appearance of fashion. But Sasha's attractiveness - independent of gender - is unquestioned. This will be an ongoing theme.
Is there any significance to Orlando's vacillating between whether the figure is a "boy" or a "woman" - rather than a "boy" or "girl;" or a "man" or a "woman?"
Perhaps related to this perspective is the fact that Orlando is often described with adjectives that focus especially on his beauty (e.g., his legs), descriptions that typically are used for women rather than men.
What might we expect in this novel if gender is being presented as the above suggests?
While less prominent, one can also observe how time is approached in Chapter One.
One can observe, for example, that Orlando is presented with the ephemeral qualities of youth and beauty against the backdrop of a family history that recedes vaguely into the past.
And the completely atypical event of the great freeze at the end of the chapter is presented as taking place at a completely specific moment.
Throughout the work, we will experience the ebb and flow of exactness and vagueness with respect to both gender and time.
A WRITER'S DIARY
(1919 - 1922)
Part of the power of Woolf's Diary is the different aspects of writing that she allows the reader to experience. Some that appear between 1919 and 1922:
Which of these features might be most usefully employed in critically considering women's fiction.
And why?
How might they be employed if one only had the text with which to work (i.e., without any external information about its creation?)
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