Custom «A Room of Ones Own» Essay Paper Sample

"A Room of One's Own" is one of Virginia Woolf's most renowned works. Some of her most distinguished sayings and phrases are entailed in this short work. In Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," her thesis provides explanation as to how women need their own room in order to find their own independence. It is also important to note that not only do women need a room of their own, but men do as well. It therefore serves as a withdrawal from daily life and Woolf uses the word, room, as a symbol for leisure time, privacy, and independence, - "Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size."

According to Virginia Woolf "A Room of One's Own" is more than just an idea on correlation of women and fiction. She insists that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction...." Particularly, she holds that a woman should have 500 pounds per year and a room with a lock on the door. In her own money, we find that Woolf relied on an inheritance from her aunt; she claims that it was given to her "for no other reason than that (she) share (d) her name." The total amount was 500 pounds every year, for the duration of life and she insists that this amount of money is really important to a woman wishing to write (Lee, pp 122).

I must put it that to have a room which can be locked from inside is indeed a bliss. Having a room of one's own enables one to shut out the world and all the chores one is required to do and just get some head space. When the writer said that, if she had to choose between the vote and money, she would take financial freedom (married women over thirty were given the vote in 1919). She thus urges all women to get out there and look for jobs and become financially independent and this is really vital for women in the society.

What really warmed me after going through her work of literature she does not write like someone who looks down upon the unenlightened and telling people to think but instead her prose is really engaging and her arguments really relevant even in the present world. However much men may bang on concerning how tiresome the same old arguments are, frankly speaking, men can continue banging on about it since unless things change, the plight of women is likely to remain the same. In reading her work, one keeps agreeing with her because she manages to articulate bewilderment and anger that various people experience even in the present world since these arguments are relevant (Howard, 2008).

In reading the work of Woolf, one idea struck an individual and makes one to begin thinking concerning feminism and women's place in the society which is that behind each oppressive act was anger towards women that I simply could not understand. Some of the questions include: Why would you need to keep a woman in her place, tied to the bed and kitchen? Why weren't women allowed to work and acquire education? Why is that women must conform to rules set by men? And finally, it therefore becomes clear that the hypocrisy alone makes women to boil with rage (Lee, pp. 456).

Lee (pp672) asserts that according to the narrator of "A Room of One's Own", money is considered as the chief element that burs women from having a home of their own and therefore, having money is one of the paramount significance. Throughout the age, the creativity of women has been systematically stifled as a result of women's lack of power. She says that, "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for merely two hundred years, but rather from the beginning of time...."

And she uses the above quote to explain why very few women have successfully written poetry. She believes that the writing of novels lends itself to frequent starts and stops, so women are more likely to write novels than poems because they are faced with a number of interruptions since they are deprived of a room of their own in which to write. It is therefore clear that without money women will remain to be in the second place to their creative male counterparts. It is also clear that financial discrepancy between men and women at the period of Woolf's writing perpetuated the myth that women were less successful writers.

She says "Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own." As a result of interruptions in "A Room of One's Own," she generally fails to regain her original concentration and thus she puts it that women are doomed to failure and difficulty in their work, without private spaces of their own. While she described Oxbridge University in the first chapter her attention is drawn to a cat without tail. She finds this cat out of place, and she uses this sight of this cat to take her text to a different direction.

This shift underscores her claims that women who lack a room of their won and the time to write, cannot compete against the men who are not faced with struggle for such basic necessities. The narrator emphasizes the fact that women are treated unequally in her society and this is why they have produced less impressive work compared to men. She illustrates this by creating a woman named Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary twin sister to William Shakespeare; she uses this woman to demonstrate how society thoroughly discriminates against women (Howard, 2008).

In conclusion, she uses symbolism in her "A Room of One's Own" to show that every woman needs a room of her own because it is really important but in contrary men are able to enjoy this without question. We also realize that a room of one's own will enable women to engage in uninterrupted writing. She uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues like: privacy, leisure time, education, and financial independence. She therefore predicts that without rectifying such inequalities, women will remain second-class citizens in regards to literary achievements.