Virginia Woolf: life and literary works

Virginia Wolff

Virginia Woolf's a Room of One's Own is written as a feminist manifesto which advocates primarily that women writers should have what she calls a room of their own and a sufficient income, so as to be able to write fiction. The essay is in fact metaphorical, and tells the story of women's writing throughout the history. The room that the author talks about describes in the first place, the practical need that conditions a woman's writing: she can not be creative unless she has enough privacy and quietness for her intellectual work. Beyond this practical need, the room is a symbol for the feminine world in general, for the space that the women and their writing should have in society. The right to have a room of one's own is the women's right to have a place in the history of literature, that they can call their own. The fact that the room would have to separate women from their given social roles, as mothers or wives, is also significant as it points to the importance of delimiting the women as an independent gender, like that of the men.

Kate Chopin's short fiction, the Story of an Hour, corroborates Virginia Woolf's ideas about feminism. The very short text tells the story of Mrs. Mallard who finds out suddenly that there has been a terrible railroad accident and that her husband is on the list of the victims. Her first normal reaction is to burst into tears and isolate herself in a room. The withdrawal into this room, away from the others, and the pleasant, cheerful view out of the window bring a sudden realization upon her: the death of her husband actually means freedom, the freedom to live for herself only and enjoy her own life. As in Virginia's Woolf book, Mrs. Mallard realizes the importance of a woman's having a room of her own, that is, her own private world where she can enjoy her own life. When she gets out of the room she had come to mourn for her husband, Mrs. Mallard finds with stupefaction that her husband had just arrived and that he had never been in the accident. The end of story tells us she dies "of joy," according to the others. Thus, Chopin's story perfectly illustrates the ideas that Virginia Woolf will express later in her book: women felt muffled in a society that didn't give them the chance to express themselves and to have their own world. The need for a room of one's own actually translates as the need of a woman to have her own world that would from where she can see life on her own terms, from her own perspective, and be able to make her own choices.