A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf’s Tryst With Feminism

There have been many feminist criticisms, long before the idea of feminism became popular, but the most convenient and relevant critique has been Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. It is an extended essay that argues for a substantive space for the women writers within the realms of a literary tradition dominated by men. The idea of the essay sprouts from Woolf’s own conception that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. In this masterpiece, Woolf talks about women both in the realms of a writer and a character in the literary works by men. She concludes about the huge discrepancy between the powerful and legendary male characters and their female counterparts in the classic fictional tales.

A Room of One's Own packs a scathing punch when it comes to delivering an impeccable feminist thought. It digs into the tryst of women with the history of literature through an unconventional and precise perusal of the social and material conditions like the leisure time, privacy, and financial independence that are essential for any literary creation to thrive. The study of such conditions becomes more relevant and interesting when seen through the prism of a woman’s deprived state. A state where they are deprived of the social and financial liberties and a state which strangulates their creativity, therefore restraining their ability to write a fictional masterpiece.

Woolf orchestrates a scathing criticism of the stereotypical hierarchies through a riveting display of her artistry. She innovatively weaves a fictional web in order to compensate for the gaps or the lack of factual record illustrating the literary prowess of women as well as the biases that revolve around the conventional scholarships.   In her tussle with this idea, Woolf launches a number of sociological and aesthetic critiques. She contemplates the state of women's own literature as well as the state of scholarship, both theoretically and historically, concerning women. She also elaborates an aesthetics based on the principle of "incandescence," the ideal state in which everything that is merely personal is consumed in the intensity and truth of one's art.

Through this work of hers, Woolf set the agenda for much feminist criticism to follow, whether by exploring and digging out the work of long forgotten women writers or by examining the assumptions behind the portrayal of women in literature. Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1971) took an alternate path with its sharp and funny exhibition of male mythologies in D. H. Lawrence, Norman Mailer and others, while Ellen Moers's Literary Women (1976) and Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own (1977) pursued the female tradition of writing along the lines of Woolf's suggestion that women writers can merely learn from their male predecessors on their own, but will never get any help from their (Men) side.