Katariina Kottonen’s Reviews > A Room of One's Own > Status Update

‘…and there would follow, even in the simplest talk, such a natural difference of opinion that the dried ideas in him would be fertilized anew; and the sight of her creating in a different medium from his own would so quicken his creative power that insensibly his sterile mind would begin to plot again, and he would find the phrase or the scene which was lacking when he put on his hat to visit her.’ (2/2)

‘He would open the door of drawing-room or nursery, I thought, and find her among her children perhaps, or with a piece of embroidery on her knee - at any rate, the centre of some different order and system of life, and the contrast between this world and his own, which might be the law courts or the House of Commons, would at once refresh and invigorate…’ (1/2)

(Also: here I go, mimicking the text in my comments. Perhaps, it is just exposure, that is all.) (4/4)

Equipped with the knowledge of what would be written for the next century, I would argue that it is ideas that demand particular forms of expression, not authors. So, perhaps, there is a correlation, and there are ideas that are often entertained and expressed by men, often entertained and expressed by women. Yet, why, arguing for a lack of limitations, would one impose such stringent constraints upon oneself? (3/4)

…onto novels that have constituted an indelible part of the English canon for some centuries now. She speaks with authority and passion.

Yet, this chapter is also the one where I find myself disagreeing with her the most. I am unconvinced there is a language that inherently belongs to male authors and is unsuitable for their female counterparts; and vice versa. (2/4)

If the opening chapter was the most literary one so far, a joy to read, rather than to ponder, the fourth chapter is the strongest in terms of arguments. Having paid sufficient attention — in terms of pages, if not fact — to female authors (or lack of them) of the Elizabethan era and prior, Woolf moves onto familiar names and faces… (1/4)

‘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)