Status Updates From A Room of One's Own

‘And what holds [novels] together in these rare instances of survival (I was thinking of War and Peace) is something that one calls integrity, though it has nothing to do with paying one’s bills or behaving honourably in an emergency. What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth.’

…and within environment less affected by rapid societal changes — that seems strange. Like disregarding the most obvious suggestion. (There is, of course, the explanation that Woolf is not actually desribing a thought process of her own, but is guiding the young female students of the Cambridge colleges along a pass they can follow with ease and pleasure.) (4/4)

Woolf was approximately forty-six when working on A Room of One's Own; yet, some of her answers appear obvious and some of her questions, startlingly naïve. That she does not extrapolate from what is known to her through direct observation; that she does not draw from the experience of women in the contemporaneous 1928, but in more remote parts of England… (3/4)

I think this is the point where the education received by Virginia Woolf and the education received by me differ greatly — mine being a composite product with heavy Continental and Marxist influences, with mathematics and logic thrown in often and a-plenty. That I am writing these lines near a century after she penned hers is also a factor. (2/4)

As the text progresses, the narrator turns to the history of literature and history in general, pondering the chasm between the multitude of female characters and the scarcity of female authors. (1/4)

Ah! The famous notion of Shakespeare’s sister! We meet at last.

It has it's ups and downs of being interesting but it is easy to listen to most of the time. Especially while cooking this was good bwksbsjs

mourning the lives of all the women who came before you is a consistent part of the female experience, it seems

There is a curious idea that so much writing by men is about women (compared by Woolf to then-written books by women about men) not because the former were the writers on record; but because men required women as a category to define themselves through and against. Of course, that is exactly what Woolf is doing in her text. As valid an approach as any, I suppose. (2/2)

The second chapter comes spent at the British Museum, where the narrator engages in research — the institution at the time mirroring the nowadays functions of the British Library. A set of observations and reflections on the relative power dynamics between the sexes follows. (1/2)

‘…it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house, and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.’

“It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?”

‘If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth?’

‘At Luncheon Parties before the War’ would make for a good title.

Altogether, it seems that the first chapter serves as an introduction and as a protracted comparison between the old (men’s) and the new (women’s) colleges at Oxbridge — presented in a a manner both superficial and profound, a meandering and easily distracted one (cf. stream of consciousness).

¡qué gran capítulo, por favor! 😫