42 pages • 1 hour read
Virginia WoolfA Room of One's Own
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1929A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaKey Figures
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) was an English author, academic, and feminist. She was born in 1882 in London, England, where she spent most of her life. She died in 1941 by suicide at 59 years old after lifelong struggles with her mental health. Known as a highly influential modernist, Woolf’s work exemplifies the use of stream of consciousness and metaphor to create complex, nuanced arguments about social issues. During her life, she wrote and published nine novels, three book-length essays, one play, and many short stories and essays.
Woolf began writing from an early age and was educated at a women’s constituent department of King’s College in London. She, several of her brothers, and their friends founded the Bloomsbury Group in 1904 after Woolf’s father died. The Bloomsbury Group was a loosely defined artist collective wherein members worked together to create and publish art, study, and discuss sociopolitical issues. The group’s atmosphere flouted social norms of the early 20th century, especially those ideals related to acceptable sexual and romantic relationships. This openness placed Woolf among some of the most progressive thinkers in London, allowing her to reflect these same ideals in her writing. Woolf’s work is most known today in relation to her feminist thinking and modernist style of writing, part of which was influenced by the world events of the early 20th century especially World War I and its devastation of Europe. The changing geopolitical and sociopolitical climates of Europe during Woolf’s lifetime greatly influenced her work.
Woolf’s half-brother (and potentially others) sexually abused Woolf and at least some of her sisters during their childhood, an experience which may have precipitated or aggravated a lifelong struggle with mental illness and depression, culminating in her death by suicide in 1941. In her adult life, Virginia Woolf stood out from many of the other women in her social class. She had several romantic relationships with other women, though she was happily married to her husband Leonard Woolf (a fellow member of the Bloomsbury Group). Woolf’s sexuality greatly influences her work, especially her feminist essays like A Room of One’s Own, because she directly experienced the difficulties that accompany deviation from expected behaviors.
Woolf and A Room of One’s Own were, in many ways, ahead of their time in articulating a feminist perspective, especially her discussions about the importance of representation and how these representations inform society about social roles.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English author who lived from 1775-1817 and is known today for her six main published novels, three of which were published posthumously. Some of her most famous titles include Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Austen’s work is both romantic and satirical, offering criticisms of English society at the turn of the 19th century. With a focus on the marriage market, her novels often incorporate elements of realism in their portrayal of the lives of women—a portrayal that had been largely lacking in the English literary canon until this time. Austen died at only 41, and she never married nor had any children.
In the context of A Room of One’s Own, Woolf attributes much of Austen’s literary success to her “genius.” Austen’s work, while broadly unappreciated during her life, expresses a facet of life absent from the English literary canon. This portrayal of normalcy alongside Austen’s (often harsh) critiques of the English landed gentry class provides a viewpoint not found in literature written by men. One of Woolf’s primary reasons for discussing Jane Austen in A Room of One’s Own is that a woman’s perspective on the customs and rules around marriage was something of a revolutionary act since women held little to no autonomy regarding the institution of marriage in the early 19th century.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
George Eliot is the pen name for English author Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), She published seven novels during her lifetime as well as poetry and essays. Her work is defined by its political commentary, realism, and rich characters. The choice to publish her novels under a male pen name was made to protect her work from sexist expectations. Her real identity was not concealed for long, however, and after the publication of her first novel, Adam Bede, in 1859, the public eventually learned that Evans was the real author. Evans lived a life that violated many social expectations, such as engaging openly in an affair with married George Henry Lewes and denouncing Christianity.
Woolf’s inclusion of Eliot’s work in her discussion of 19th century women novelists is not surprising because Eliot’s novels, especially Middlemarch, are some of the most famous Victorian era works. However, Woolf claimed that Eliot was somewhat lesser than Jane Austen and Emily Brontë because it was marked with emotion that dampens Eliot’s “genius.” This judgement is almost certainly related to Eliot’s tendency to use deeply emotional, often psychological, descriptions.
Charlotte and Emily Brontë
Charlotte (1816-1855) and Emily Brontë (1818-1848) were English sisters and novelists. Charlotte wrote four novels during her life, the most famous of which is Jane Eyre; Emily wrote only one novel before she died, Wuthering Heights. The Brontë sisters are often discussed alongside their younger sister Anne (1820-1849), though Anne is not as famous as her sisters because Charlotte prevented the republication of Anne’s most famous novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) after Anne’s death. The three sisters also published a work of poetry under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, respectively), though most of their other work was originally published under their real names.
In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf assesses Charlotte and Emily Brontë alongside Jane Austen and George Eliot, concluding that Charlotte’s work (like that of Eliot) is not at quite the same level of “genius” as Emily’s work (like that of Austen). The work of Charlotte and Emily shares many important similarities: emphasis of the female experience, discussion and critique of social practices, and richly constructed character dynamics. What Woolf claims separates Emily’s work over Charlotte’s is Charlotte’s capitulation to negative emotions associated with her struggles as a woman. Emily’s work, according to Woolf, transcends this personal anger, whereas Charlotte’s does not.
Related Titles
By Virginia Woolf
