A Room of Your Own: Why Do Women Have to Have a Room of Their Own?

"If a woman wants to write, she has to have money and a room of her own."

Almost a century ago, the British female writer Woolf used her life to explain this most reasonable quote for us.

In the era of rapid economic development, for migrant workers in the city, being able to have a room of their own in the area is the dream and motivation of many people.

And for the same female workers, this seems difficult to reach.

What kind of issues should "a room of one's own" rise to for people in the 21st century, and how will it relate to our later lives? What will it mean?

Woolf is hailed as the gifted female writer of twentieth-century modernism and feminism. A century later, her "A Room of My Own" is now in my hands.

What kind of life inspiration will it bring to a reader, or a woman?

1. Women and fiction

The book is an expanded collection of two speeches by Woolf on the theme of "Women and the Novel" at Nunham Women's College and Godin Women's College, Cambridge, on 26 October and 28 October 1928.

Although the two colleges admit girls, they have no way to get a degree, which gives Woolf a good opportunity to express some of his views and ideas.

The book is divided into six chapters and covers a wealth of content. Only the parts read here.

For the speech, we may think of the flat, rigid preaching, or the inflammatory emotions of the speech; Woolf is using his own female identity to express his anxiety and the discussion of the current dilemma that women have to face.

She incarnated in any name that the audience sounded accepted and liked, and incorporated into the speech. In order to search for the materials needed for the speech, she wandered around the Oxbridge, and after suffering from the closed door, she walked on the lawn, and sat in meditation by the river...

She just wanted to go to the university library to look up materials and see what manuscripts might be left behind by great writers, only to be told that women could only be allowed to enter if they were accompanied by a fellow at the academy or with a letter of recommendation.

Why, after so long, she wondered, did no woman think of leaving a £300,000 at university for a lecture fund and scholarship for women of the same gender.

She began to look back at some bitter history, and half a century ago, the women were penniless, and they had only raised thirty thousand pounds with all their efforts and efforts; at the same time, a mother had given birth to thirteen children.

How can she weigh between making money and having children?

After eating a day's worth of closed doors, she wrote:

"I think of the comfort and abundance enjoyed by one gender group, and the poverty and insecurity endured by another gender group; and the influence of tradition and absence on a writer's mind. Finally, I think it's time to empty the day's speculations, impressions, anger and laughter, like throwing away a crumpled ball of paper and throwing it into the fence wall.

In the lonely deep blue night sky, the stars shine. In the face of such an incredible world, it seems that only one person can be alone, and all the people are asleep, lying on their stomachs, sideways, and silent. The streets and alleys of Niuqiao were empty. Even the door of the inn opened quietly, as if pushed open by an invisible hand; not a single servant got up to light the lamp in order to wait for me, illuminating my way back to the room, and the night was so deep. ”

This is a passage of disappointment and loneliness of the author's fictional "Mary" after a fruitless search for answers about women and fiction.

We can use the situation of women described by Jane Austen in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to feel that women in Woolf's time still had such a social experience.

Although Woolf was born into a literary family and was talented, just because she was a girl, there was no way to receive a formal education, and her brother could easily enter Cambridge. She has been haunted by this for the rest of her life.

2. Women and poverty

Continue to follow in the footsteps of Woolf's consciousness. Now there is a new scene.

It's still the season of falling leaves, but it's already crossing the streets of London, no longer the Cow Bridge.

Having experienced luncheons and dinners in Oxbridge, the author inevitably turns his quest to the British Museum.

"Why is it that one gender group enjoys prosperity and wealth, but the other group is so poor?"

"What effect does poverty have on fiction? What are the conditions for engaging in artistic creation? ”

However, Wu Yufu, who has many questions, does not find the answer from previous materials and books. The only thing that was gained was still a problem:

"Why do male writers talk so much about women, even in epic poems, while at the same time belittling the intelligence, physical strength, and abilities of women?"

As a result, Woolf became the first female writer in history to detect the nature of the anger of certain men, uncovering the truth about the world of male authority.

What they care about is not the inferior social status of women, but their own superiority. That's what they overemphasize and rush to shelter.

It is precisely because of the low social status of women that their status will be magnified. This also explains to some extent the necessity of women for men, and can also be used to explain how unsettling women's criticism makes them.

This opens woolf's discussion of the survival and status implications of economic lifelines on women's poverty.

In 1918, Woolf's aunt died, and she received a lifetime pension of 500 pounds a year, which changed the way she lived on some odd jobs at the newspaper office, and more importantly, changed the way she looked at the world, and she could finally let go of writing.

For poor women who were contemporaries of Woolf, it was difficult to have a life of their own. Their footsteps are always shuttled or stayed in the living room, kitchen, nursery, responding to the needs of life.

There is no space for them to read, think, write and express their thoughts.

3. The story of Shakespeare's sister

Turning to the third chapter of the book, woolf returned from the British Museum disappointed, and from the museum's numerous collections, he did not find the answer he wanted.

There is always a reason for a woman's poverty in one way or another.

Then she kept her eyes on her bookcase, and she had to narrow her search to the Elizabethan Women of England, and in front of the bookcase with the history books, she took professor Trevillian's History of England.

She searched for indexes such as "women", "status", etc., and what she saw was "The wife of the Europeans is recognized as the power of men..."

The historian continues, "If a daughter does not marry a son-in-law chosen by her parents, she may be locked up in a house and beaten and kicked, and the public remains indifferent to this." Marriage is not about personal feelings, but about the family's way of accumulating wealth, especially in high society that advocates 'chivalry'..."

Referring again to the status of women two hundred years later during the Tuyat dynasty, the professor concluded that "whether it is women in Shakespeare's plays or some reliable seventeenth-century memoirs, the women in them seem to have no lack of personality and character." ”

But these manifestations of the continuous improvement of "women's social status" over the past hundred years are only in the novels written by men.

Through a story, xu can more intuitively explain the survival and development dilemma of women in the society at that time.

Below is the story of the famous "Shakespeare Sister".

If Shakespeare had a younger sister who was as talented and talented as her brother, how would her fate develop?

Before we state this story, let's take a look at how Shakespeare went down the path of theatrical actor.

As we all know, he was born in a well-to-do family and may have been a naughty child. Went to grammar school, probably studied Latin, read Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, and learned the basic grammar and logic.

Despite his stubborn temperament, it did not prevent his development. Or maybe he was forced to marry the girl next door early because he was in trouble, and within ten months, she bore him a child.

In order to avoid the disturbances, he had to flee his hometown to London to make a living for himself. He had a high interest in drama, first leading a horse at the door of the troupe, and soon joined the troupe and became a popular actor.

Since then, living in a flashy city, he has made a wide range of friends, become a celebrity in the eyes of everyone, and practiced his artistic dreams on the stage, even going in and out of the court and performing in the queen's palace.

Meanwhile, by reasonable reason, his gifted sister was left at home. Like her brother, she is imaginative, adventurous and eager to reach the outside world.

However, she had no way to go to school, to receive grammar or logic, let alone to recite Horace or Virgil.

Occasionally, she grabbed a book that her brother had dropped, and just after a few pages of reading, she was interrupted by her parents who walked in, and told her to mend her socks and take care of lunch on the stove, in short, she was not allowed to waste time on books.

Their tone was harsh, but their attitude was kind, because they understood what a girl's future life would be like.

They love their daughter, and it is possible that she is still the pearl in the palm of their father's hand.

It wasn't long before she was a teenager promised to the son of a neighboring wool merchant. She cried and complained, protesting against this family affair, but was beaten up by her father.

Next, the father changed his face, no longer scolding her, but begging his daughter not to embarrass him and not to embarrass him in the marriage.

He also promised that his daughter would buy her a necklace or a beautiful dress if she obeyed. The father cried out in tears, which made a daughter how could he not obey? How could she make her father sad?

Only her innate ideological talent made her fierce.

She wrapped her clothes, wrapped them in a small bag, and on summer nights, climbed the window and fled straight for London. She was not yet seventeen that year.

"The birds in the hedges are not as cheerful as hers."

Like her brother, she has a great talent for the rhythm of words and is equally fond of theater.

She stood by the backstage door and said she wanted to be an actress in exchange for the unobstructed ridicule of a group of people. The theater manager, a fat man, shouted "I haven't heard of any woman who can act." He also gave her hints one by one so you must have guessed what he was hinting at. ”

She doesn't have a place to train her talents, can't eat in small restaurants, or wanders the streets late at night?

She was young and had eyes as charming as Shakespeare's. Cast manager Nick Green felt pity for her, but unsurprisingly got her pregnant with the gentleman's child.

One winter night, she committed suicide and was buried in a crossroads wasteland.

At the end of the story, we can't help but "marvel" at the fabrication of Woolf's genius, so thoroughly: the different fates of the two genders in the same era.

In this way, we have to contemplate the importance of women's social status, the mission of the female pioneers of an era, and the literary power of "one's own room".

In short, you must have the freedom to survive in order to have time to write the values that may be generated in your thoughts, otherwise, all your creativity will be corroded by life and then numb.

4. Conclusion

From the sixteenth century, the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century... In the contemporary era, Woolf, from Oxbridge, to the British Museum, to her own private collection, has sorted out the missing and developing women's literature in Britain and even Europe.

Just writing, what seems so simple to us today, has gone through such a long history and change.

Perhaps "room" is only a limited term for conditions, but it is another direction of expansion that brings the realm of thought to later women, including men.

It is not only a place for us to live, but more importantly, it is a necessary space that may generate the value of thoughts – to construct new directions in life and the will to live in those thoughts.

In A Room of Your Own, you can see it either as a real material being or as a spiritual image of withdrawal.

"The great mind is hermaphrodite", which is an important idea of the English poet Coleridge, and it is not the genius of Virginia Woolf.

Author: Jane Y, a member of the Intensive Reading Friends Association, draws the fragrance of life from simplicity.