A Room Of One's Own Analysis

Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” uses the symbolism of a room to express solitude and leisure time. Women were excluded from education and the unequal distribution of wealth. Through this idea, women lack the essential necessities to produce their own creativity. Women wrote out of their own anger and insecurity. Men wrote intellectual passages that were highly praised because a woman could never live up to a man’s expectations in literature due to lack of education.

While the narrator recognizes the great care with which her husband is treating her she seems to constantly feel that she is being ungrateful. She calls herself out in her journal for being a “comparative burden” (Gilman) The room in which the narrator resides has a sturdy bed that is nailed to the floor. The narrator notes that there are bars on the windows and rings hooked into the wall. She wrongly assumes that this room was used as a nursery or gymnasium by the previous owners. As the reader, we are able to instill our own thoughts that this room was in fact built to house someone with a mental disorder. This begs the question of what the house really is, to contain such a room away from decent society.

In the quote, Woolf is discussing the confidence of women. Since the job of a woman is basically to be inferior to men, women are losing confidence. Women are constantly struggling to do what they want as they require, “gigantic courage and strength”. Wolf believes that men have purposefully made women inferior in order to reinforce their own confidence. Thus, this lack of confidence not only led to lack of quality life for women but also led to a lack of writing. However, even with this lack confidence women continue to persist and do everything they can to write. Woolf believes that if women did have more money and confidence, then they would not have to be so inferior and get married to men so early on. Woolf believes she could have done what she wanted as she would have been financially stable and not be reliant on others. Thus, Woolf could have been the boss of herself with freedom and time. With this freedom and time, Woolf and other women could have had the opportunities to produce the works they wanted to and get it published.

Back in the day almost everyone viewed woman to be the person who cleans, cooks, has children, and obeys her husband. Even woman themselves had this view hammered into their minds at such a young age, the views that women are inferior to men. This stigma of woman can be found traced throughout Virginia Woolf’s essay of two meals, a meal for men and a meal for women at a college. She uses numerous composition techniques and effectively disperses them throughout her narrative. By doing so, she accurately demonstrates her views on society’s stigma of a woman's role in an eloquent manner.

“The Other Two” by Edith Wharton focuses on the idea that women in the early 20th century are treated as property because of the gender roles present at the time. This is displayed in Wharton’s story through one of the main characters, Alice Waythorn, who is struggling with traditional gender roles due to her past marriages. When Alice marries her most recent husband, Mr. Waythorn, they both deal with her ex-husbands, Mr. Varick and Mr. Haskett, on a regular basis. Mr. Waythorn, Mr. Varick, and Mr. Haskett all treat Alice like a commodity instead of a person. The possession of Alice by Mr. Waythorn is present throughout the story.

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster is a classic tale about a girl from Elizabethan era England trying to find independence and purpose in the world. Lucy, the novel’s main character, embarks on a journey to Florence, Italy with her cousin during which her whole perspective is refreshed. She experiences many new things and shares exciting times with people she knows and meets, and feels like a new person from it. But, when she arrives back home in England, she begins to feel the enclosure of society back on her again. Florence is a place where she can be herself, and her home on Summer Street in England is a place where she feels the full force of class restriction.

Throughout history, gender roles have been an important barrier in society. Women are forced to satisfy expectations established by men and society. “My Last Duchess,” by Robert Browning, focuses on the powerful Duke establishing certain expectations of the Duchess, and attempting to control her. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, concentrates on Laertes establishing certain expectations of Ophelia, and seeking to control her. A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf, centers on societal expectations of Judith, and her father trying to control her. In all three texts, men have the ability to control women and have the freedom to do as they please. Women must conform to the expectations of faithfulness, attentiveness, and chastity.

A woman is given limited freedom. Something as simple as a room could give her a sense of liberty. In Virginia Woolf's article, she claims that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Woolf suggests that having a room literally allows women to have their own space to write, but figuratively traps them in their own thoughts due to a lack of freedom. In the works of Jamaica Kincaid, Virginia Woolf, and Alice Walker, the female figures have shown how their own thoughts, reflection, and creativity could be used as a sense of freedom.

A Room with a View depicts the struggle between societal expectations and independence. This book takes place in two different settings, it opens in Italy where Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin Charlotte Bartlett are vacationing. Lucy is a talented Pianist whose passion can be observed by simply watching her play. Lucy is originally from Windy Corner, England where her family owns much real estate. The Honeychurch’s are rather wealthy, and enjoy the luxuries of upper class lifestyle. Charlotte Bartlett is Lucy’s older, poorer cousin. She has never married, and has very old fashioned views for life and people. For Lucy Italy is a chance to gain independence from her boring life in England. Lucy is a product of Upper Class societal constrictions, and as a woman coming to age she wants to free herself from societal expectations. This feeling is expanded upon when she meets George Emerson. George is a quiet, yet thoughtful person. He is melancholy, and struggles to find meaning in daily life. His father, Mr. Emerson, is a kind, yet misunderstood man. He is seen as rude and loud; however, has a great passion for art and beauty. Lucy’s first encounter with the Emerson’s is at the Bertolini pension where her and her cousin are staying. Charlotte, at dinner, complains about the poor view she has in her room. “‘The Signora had no business to do it… she promised us south rooms with a close view together, instead here

We need to know who we are, in order to know where we belong in the world. In “If Shakespeare Had Had Sister” By Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf is trying to reclaim Shakespeare's sister. “To have lived a free life in London in the 16th century would have meant for a woman who was poet and playwright a nervous stress and dilemma which might well have killed her”(537).

In Virginia Woolf’s feminist essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” (16) if she is to write fiction of any merit. The point as she develops it is a perceptive one, and far more layered and various in its implications than it might at first seem. But I wonder if perhaps Woolf did not really tap the full power of her thesis. She recognized the necessity of the writer’s financial independence to the birth of great writing, but she failed to discover the true relationship to great writing of another freedom; for just as economic freedom allows one to inhabit a physical space---a room of one’s own---so does mental freedom allow one to inhabit one’s own mind and body “incandescent and

Frankenstein is the story of a scientist who creates human life, but quickly abandons his creation, leaving it to fend for itself, as he regrets the decisions he made to create the being in the first place. Room by Emma Donoghue, depicts a mother, Ma and her son, Jack who are trapped in an enclosed room, and have been for all of Jack’s life and years prior to that. Their capturer, Old Nick has kept them away from any contact of the outside world, and in turn made them reliant on him for all their basic needs. The Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley presents many strange character relationships whether they be sibling, parental, or platonic friendships. Similarly, Room has unconventional character dynamics due to their unusual circumstances of

The first major point made by Woolf in A Room of One’s Own is synonymous with the essay’s thesis. Woolf first introduces this theme in the beginning of her essay: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (4). The concept of a woman needing to possess finances and an individual space is recurrent throughout the book. To Woolf, this idea is tantamount to obtaining freedom. During the era in which Woolf lived and set A Room of One’s Own, women faced various limitations that stripped them of their ability to find true creative liberation. With so much of their time spent in the house and no access to finances, women struggled to find separation from the home. Thus, Woolf’s emphasis on money and a room symbolizes the separation and freedom

In the second page of the story the narrator talks about her room in there vacation house. She says this.

A room of one’s own is based in the format of a lecture at a women’s college on the topic of women and fiction. Woolf bases her essay around the thesis that “women need money and a room of their own in order to write fiction”. Characters such as Mary Beton, Mary Carmichael, and Mary Seton are used as imaginary narrators, whom of which are grappling the same topic as Woolf. The narrator uses Oxbridge and various libraries to reflect on different educational experiences available to men and women. At Oxbridge the narrator focuses on the material differences, while in a British library the narrator concentrates on the matter in which women are written about. The British library proves to show the topic of women are written by men and with