A Room of One's Own
1929
- authorship
- economic conditions
- feminism
- feminist theory
- femmes
- femmes dans la littérature
- femmes écrivains
- histoire
- histoire et critique
- history
The story
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled "Women and Fiction", and hence the essay, are considered non-fiction. The essay is generally seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.
What it’s like
Brisk, witty, and conversational, the prose reads like a lecture delivered by someone who is amused and quietly furious at once. Woolf's sentences wander through sensory detail: a walk across college lawns in autumn, the contrast between a well-dined men's table and a thin supper elsewhere, the hush of a reading room lined with books. The mood is wry and intimate, with a sharp edge that never tips into anger for its own sake. Its rhythm is digressive and playful, circling an argument with asides, imagined scenes, and sudden plain statements that land hard. Emotionally it is bracing rather than sad, a blend of irony, hope, and insistence. It suits an unhurried afternoon with a cup of tea, a slow reread on a train, or a long evening when you want ideas that feel alive on the page. There is no violence, gore, or explicit content, and the only darkness is intellectual, the weight of centuries of exclusion. It is for readers who enjoy essayistic voice, literary history, and clear-eyed feminist argument delivered with humor and grace.
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