A Room of One's Own

3. Lorainne Sim asks why it is that, within the field of everyday life studies, women writers and voices have such a marginal presence when it comes to the question of the everyday, even while the concept of the everyday is so often tied to femininity. How does Woolf help us begin an answer to this question? Give specific examples.

The simple answer to this would be how Woolf brings up the conditions of relative intellectual and economic poverty in which women were once raised. This had a clear negative effect on women's ability to output significant work in philosophy and scientific studies. Her story of Shakespeare's imaginary sister is an especially poignant example of how the mere fact of womanhood is detrimental to one's ability to produce great fiction. The way which she describes the relative poverty of Fernham and Oxbridge, and the apparent pressures which she places onto Mary Carmichael as she is reading, seems to indicate the perpetuation of those conditions in ways that are less visible but still guide the judgement of women's works to the present day.

I also felt that nearing the end of the essay, Woolf's writing became increasingly heteronormative. It seemed like her characterization of men and women as requiring a duality of manly-woman and womanly-man was just another way of perpetuating existing stereoptypes about femininity and masculinity, and how we "should" be involving the specialties of the "other" in order to produce works with integrity. Surely there are more influences that deserve to be drawn from beyond the simple generalizations of gender binaries?

Woolf

Woolf's piece was very interesting to me, the way in which she constructed and presented her piece makes more interested in actually reading it because she writes her ideas and concepts as they are in that moment rather than write in your typical academic language. She tells her essay in more of a story format and she also made her piece somewhat more personal which makes the readers more easily relatable to her through her work.
I personally thought that Woolf's message was very powerful and persuasive. She talked about the difficulties that women faced back in her time because women were typically not able to voice their own opinions because they did not have their own space for those thoughts nor were they able to be educated on the everyday. Though now, women have come a long way and now we see many successful women writers and Woolf's piece is one to look back at for women who are studying or writing about this field.

Separate but unequal

Woolf is writing in a fictional, novelist style, which I think is a way to express everyday aspects of female academic life in a universalized way. That is, the fact that the narrator is basically anonymous may make it simultaneously easier for readers to recognize the ordinariness of her experience, and more difficult to reject her experience as unique to Woolf (and therefore inapplicable to the wider female condition). This is a very supportive technique because I think she's trying to convey the way in which the everyday disadvantages of women's lives prevent their emergence in academia, literature, culture. Without 'a room of her own,' the narrator is subject to all the distractions and interruptions of thought that female were especially subjected to. Without money, the narrator can't escape from the role demands of her gender or the intellectually stifling environment (e.g. of a shitty college), both of which are recognizably everyday aspects of a woman's life and therefore of their intellectual repression.

Woolf

Woolf takes a completely different approach to academic writing when producing a Room of One’s Own. When calling out the expectations for a typical scholarly lecture she is also undermining them. In my eyes, when she does this it calls out the ridicule of a typical scholarly lecture. I think that she does this for that reason and also because by doing this it explains why her lecture will be so different and why she is doing what she is doing. Obviously this writing is very different then most, I kind of like to think of it as a journal.  The reason I believe this is because she is explaining her thought process and going over every tedious detail as one might do in a journal. I think that this gives the audience a more intimate look into Woolf’s mind and really emphasizes the need for a creative being to have space. Therefore, making this lecture extremely powerful and meaningful when looked at through an open mind.

Answer to #2

When referring needing a space to one's own and money, Woolf is referring to the fact that women have been kept from writing because of relative poverty. Financial freedom will give women the freedom to write essentially. The writing to states that having a room was "out of the question" unless a family was "rich and noble." Furthermore, Woolf's father believed only sons should be sent to college, ultimately ridding girls of knowledge. The thought of a girl being intelligent enough to write is fictitious in itself because of this.

I believe the term "space" is used literally and figuratively. It is literal in the fact that many families and women in particular did not have space to write in the is private and thought provoking. Also, society did not leave much space for women writers to evolve.More figuratively, women were shut off and limited space to men.

A Room of One's Own

Woolf begins her lecture by calling out the conventions and expectations for scholarly lectures, while simultaneously subverting them. How would you describe what Woolf is doing here? What kind of writing is this? And how does it differ from traditional academic discourse? Finally, what is the effect of the way she presents her ideas?
I think the way in which Woolf casually subverts the expectations for scholarly lectures makes her essay seem more sound, more relatable, and more personal to her. The way in which the essay is written like a "journal" like we discussed in class (casual yet powerful and effective), elevates her topic on women and fiction. Her metaphor in the first chapter about the fish (which represents an idea) only to be disturbed by a man, is really humorous - she makes casual metaphors like this throughout her essay to show how men have overpowered her.

Woolf also presents herself as a fictional character to the reader as "Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael...". This is humorous yet powerful because Mary is a common named that may often be forgotten, that's why Woolf insists to be called whatever the reader would like to call her. 

Woolf also writes in order to remind the reader that they are reading a piece of fiction - the reader will not be able to forget that they are reading fiction because it is mentioned by Woolf so often. In a traditionally written fictional work, you instantly forget what you're reading may be true or not, because the characters in the book do not remind you that the work is fictional.  

woolf

3. Lorainne Sim asks why it is that, within the field of everyday life studies, women writers and voices have such a marginal presence when it comes to the question of the everyday, even while the concept of the everyday is so often tied to femininity. How does Woolf help us begin an answer to this question? Give specific examples.

By taking readers step by step through the myriad of hurdles that interrupt her train of thought, Woolf intimately and tangibly voices her everyday doubts about the way society works, especially for women. As Woolf proves, women writers were physically unable to have a voice due to the social structures of her time period. In regards to the space that Woolf says is necessary, women literally could not become writers without a space to expand their thoughts. At the time, men dominated every space, especially educational ones, prohibiting women from learning/becoming educated.

Everyday life studies are only recently starting to see women in the field because that is how it has been for every field of study. Women were not allowed a proper education for a very long time, so it makes perfect sense that they would not be present in the educational realm; even more to be significant and notable in it. Everyday life is even more of a struggle for women to converse about because their position in society was completely defined for them.

She uses the example of the meals they received at lunchtime to show how money was significantly more sufficient for men rather than women. Compared to the men's college, the women's college was sub-par. Along with the noticeably pitiful meal, the women at the college were not offered wine; furthermore, they did not converse with one another, co-create ideas, or learn from each other.  

Everyday life changes, especially for women and minorities, when the rules of society change. It is baffling that we are still fighting for women's rights with our modern wave of feminism; however, we have come a long way from the times of Virginia Woolf.