Women writers' are a class all unto themselves. The hardships that they had to endure to make their creative juices flowing to being publish was in itself a troublesome task to put it mildly. They had no rights! Virginia Woolf said it best in her book, A Room of One's Own, 1929. The complexities of women of that time period to get the recognition they deserved, not to mention the time and space to write one's creative dreams was truly stressful. Even if they did complete their dream of a book, just getting it published was yet another fiasco waiting to happen. We were not on the same level as male writer's.
To start...money plays a key issue with A Room of One's Own. In order to get money you needed to work and back then the bread winner was the male, husband, whatever you want to call them. Women were looked upon as a child and was kept so by their husband. They didn't want them to be worldly as they were, it wouldn't be proper. So they had no power and so their creativity was silenced so to speak.
The narrator speaks, “Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time . . .”
" She uses this quotation to explain why so few women have written successful poetry. She believes that the writing of novels lends itself more easily to frequent starts and stops, so women are more likely to write novels than poetry: women must contend with frequent interruptions because they are so often deprived of a room of their own in which to write. Without money, the narrator implies, women will remain in second place to their creative male counterparts. The financial discrepancy between men and women at the time of Woolf’s writing perpetuated the myth that women were less successful writers."
I'd like to talk now about the interruptions of women writers, because even today it continues to hamper our creative juices. Women of that time period, who didn't have a 'private' space of their own were doomed to fail. What with the constant interruptions her train of thought was being stopped and any writer knows that once the train of thought is interrupted it's hard to get it going again. So their work is doomed from the get go and it even continues to this day! I being a wife, mother (my kids are grown up now), would and still am getting interrupted for various reasons! Feed the dog, let the dog out, youngest son (23) wanting something of me, hubby needing me for whatever, while I sit in my, excuse me, 'our' computer room trying hard to write my sequel. I would like to be able to put a sign on my door saying, "working, do not interrupt!" But my family is important to me.
To end this conversation of women's private room, Virginia goes on to write, "The central point of A Room of One’s Own is that every woman needs a room of her own—something men are able to enjoy without question. A room of her own would provide a woman with the time and the space to engage in uninterrupted writing time. During Woolf’s time, women rarely enjoyed these luxuries. They remained elusive to women, and, as a result, their art suffered. But Woolf is concerned with more than just the room itself. She uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues, such as privacy, leisure time, and financial independence, each of which is an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women. Woolf predicts that until these inequalities are rectified, women will remain second-class citizens and their literary achievements will also be branded as such."
To start...money plays a key issue with A Room of One's Own. In order to get money you needed to work and back then the bread winner was the male, husband, whatever you want to call them. Women were looked upon as a child and was kept so by their husband. They didn't want them to be worldly as they were, it wouldn't be proper. So they had no power and so their creativity was silenced so to speak.
The narrator speaks, “Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time . . .”
" She uses this quotation to explain why so few women have written successful poetry. She believes that the writing of novels lends itself more easily to frequent starts and stops, so women are more likely to write novels than poetry: women must contend with frequent interruptions because they are so often deprived of a room of their own in which to write. Without money, the narrator implies, women will remain in second place to their creative male counterparts. The financial discrepancy between men and women at the time of Woolf’s writing perpetuated the myth that women were less successful writers."
I'd like to talk now about the interruptions of women writers, because even today it continues to hamper our creative juices. Women of that time period, who didn't have a 'private' space of their own were doomed to fail. What with the constant interruptions her train of thought was being stopped and any writer knows that once the train of thought is interrupted it's hard to get it going again. So their work is doomed from the get go and it even continues to this day! I being a wife, mother (my kids are grown up now), would and still am getting interrupted for various reasons! Feed the dog, let the dog out, youngest son (23) wanting something of me, hubby needing me for whatever, while I sit in my, excuse me, 'our' computer room trying hard to write my sequel. I would like to be able to put a sign on my door saying, "working, do not interrupt!" But my family is important to me.
To end this conversation of women's private room, Virginia goes on to write, "The central point of A Room of One’s Own is that every woman needs a room of her own—something men are able to enjoy without question. A room of her own would provide a woman with the time and the space to engage in uninterrupted writing time. During Woolf’s time, women rarely enjoyed these luxuries. They remained elusive to women, and, as a result, their art suffered. But Woolf is concerned with more than just the room itself. She uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues, such as privacy, leisure time, and financial independence, each of which is an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women. Woolf predicts that until these inequalities are rectified, women will remain second-class citizens and their literary achievements will also be branded as such."
Comments
Post a Comment