Rereading Woolf ’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’

There was a large bookstore some years ago in my neighborhood. It was kind of my shelter as well as a resting place, a place to look around, read new books and spend time. There were times when I just sat — doing nothing special — to calm myself down or clear my head from many thoughts and worries. However, due to the expensive property rent, as that bookstore was very spacious, it had to close. Losing my shelter and resting place, I was sad and I wandered here and there. I found another bookstore, which was smaller and not that far from my house.

The other day I went to the small bookstore as the cold winter rain fell. It was small and cozy. I could see a wooden table on which was a glass vase with several dried roses and a low, fabric-covered stand glowing with yellow light. I could hear the quick, breathtaking sound of the violin from “Winter” of Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” as if heralding an impending heavy snowfall. Looking around the bookshelves, I noticed Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” and picked it up. Then in a cafe having a cup of coffee, I read the book again. I once tried to read it before but couldn’t finish it.

Reading the book and imagining Woolf strolling through the streets of London around the turn of the 20th century, I could feel as if she was talking to me and writing sentences right in front of me, despite the huge time difference. Woolf was developing her ideas and thoughts in order to give a kind of lecture on the topic of women and fiction, namely, women and writing, and in this process, she was not only using various imaginings and literary devices but also researching historical facts.

In the early 20th century, women were not allowed to enter libraries at universities in England. Most women were poor, without many opportunities to work decent jobs. She concluded that women should have a regular income and their own rooms in order to write essays or fiction. Even though Woolf was a novelist and critic, she had a lot of knowledge on women’s lives and histories. She described and took issue with how women’s lives and women writers’ literary works had been shaped and changed according to historical eras.

She depicted various eras when women had no other choices in life but marriage when women could not possess even a small amount of money, when it was taken for granted that women were battered and beaten by their husbands, and when women writers had to hide and disguise their names to publish their books. On top of that, Woolf deplored that she had no or only a tenuous tradition of women writers to refer to or rely on, as it had been tough for the women writers who came before her to survive let alone distinguish themselves in literary history.

Regarding this last point, I have felt the same way. I have felt quite often that there were too few women writers or women scholars for me to refer to. On the other hand, I hope that my humble life can be a tiny part of a tradition for other women or someone to refer to and rely on.