Recensioni dei lettori

• lydia1879

  (4/5)

  Whenever someone talked about Virginia Woolf, they talked about this book, and how much they loved it. They recommended I start here, with A Room of One's Own, a collection of essays given at a speech at various universities.
  
  I was skeptical. Up until very recently, I didn't read a lot of non-fiction. But this isn't just a collection of essays - you get a sense not only of Woolf's writing, but of the woman herself.
  
  In this book she speculates that Shakespeare had a sister, and wonders how successful she might've been. (Not very, unless she had A Room of Her Own.)
  
  The reason I love this book is because Virginia Woolf takes all that is familiar to me as a former history major, (the sexism rife throughout literature) and picks it apart. She's vulnerable, she's frustrated, she's a little bit bitter, but her writing is beautiful.
  
  I'll leave you with one of the passages from the book that has stayed with me since I read it a few years ago.
  
  "A queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.”
• bookomaniac-1

  (2/5)

  Essay, op basis van lezing uit 1929, over het lot van de vrouw en mogelijkheden om er uit te breken. Zeer wervend en met mooie inzichten, maar niet altijd vlotte lectuur door onduidelijke opbouw.
• dreamingtereza_1

  (4/5)

  Essential.
• judtheobscure

  (5/5)

  After a friend recommended it I found a copy and read it through in a day. It is really amazing and full of hard, crystallised truth, discursive and contemplative and philosophical and fervent. Wonderful stuff that had me jotting down extracts in my notebook over and over. I need to read more of her.
• mmoj_2

  (3/5)

  I felt the book covered as much about men as it did women. Woolf was such a widely read author that almost every page had me wanting to pick up another work mentioned. I am still wondering though could the room of one's own be oneself and the strength of character, pride and sense of self be the 500 pounds?
• sasham-1

  (5/5)

  Made me really appreciate the things I take for granted, living in a modern, western country - the ability to own property, have a job, control my money and have a political voice and choices in my life: It pays to be reminded that it hasn't been that long since women had none of those things and we should never take them for granted.
• mariannehusbands

  (5/5)

  I have been questioning much in my life lately with particular guilt about how much I have let both myself and my sex and my children down, given the opportunities that I have had. I have parents who throughout my childhood have actively encouraged me to get a good education and who have nutured and supported me to achieve my best and I squandered it. I have worked in life and had some great jobs but right now I am completely dependant on my husband for a living - shame on me!!!! I am time rich - I have loads of time. Every day I am dripping in time and I waste it on Candy Crush Saga and yet I am so terrified that there is hardly any time left at all - what a travesty!!!!!I read A Room of One's Own in two sessions - I could not sleep after the first session as my mind was already racing.After completing the essay this evening I am compelled to write down my thoughts in this review.So firstly, Virginia Wolf got me thinking, her essay made me look at myself and my responsibility not only as a woman but as a human being. What I take from what she writes in her argument is that historically women have been denied opportunities such as education, freedom of movement etc and as a result they have in general been unable to achieve in the same way as men - eg academically or vocationally but in 1928 those opportunities are improving for women and so women can no longer hide in excuses so long as they are well off, which I believe is the second point she is making in so much as it doesn't matter whether you are male or female you still need to have money to write. I think it goes further and really it is also about respect. Not about men having respect for women but about us all having respect for ourselves as human beings and respect for each other. Let's stop blaming men and just embrace who we are men or women we all count. There will always be exceptions to any rule but basically at the end of the day it comes down to this. Stop making excuses and blaming others and just do it - whatever it is JUST DO IT because nowadays anything is possible by anyone. (so long as you have your freedom, have access to education and can afford to live ) This is what I took from the essay on first reading - oh and there is something about lesbianism in it too.
• helenliz_1

  (3/5)

  This is a book based on a couple of lectured given by Virgina Woolf. Published in 1928 it is an interesting read. She starts with her ideas as to why women are under represented in history and in literature. The surmise is, roughly, that men who have written are those that have had the money and space to be able to find the time to write. They are not being dragged from one job to the next in order to feed the family, therefore they have the time to be able to create. She uses a hypothetical sister of Shakespeare to make her point. How did Judith manage? Well she didn't get to go to the Grammar school, so her learning was whatever she managed to pick up from William's school books, and she was always being told to put that book down and do her chores. She, similarly, fled to London, but you can't put a woman on the stage, so she gets treated as a lady of small repute and ends up, knocked up, in an unmarked grave under the roundabout at Elephant & Castle. The surmise that in order to create you need to have the time and space to do so I can believe.What didn't chime with my way of thinking was that women & men are different, and that they would write differently as a result. A woman shouldn't try and write like a man, but should continue to write in a predominantly female manner. Woolf does suggest that each sex is a mixture of both manly & womanly characteristics and that both sexes should use both characteristics when writing. So a woman shouldn't try to write in a purely manly manner, but use elements of that style to augment the feminine. I have a spot of bother with that, as it assumes that men & women are chalk & cheese. I don't think they are. I prefer to consider that, by nature, there are differences, but they are in an overlapping continuum. There are things that remain relevant in this now, 90 years later, and in some ways it is god to see how things have moved (women are granted degrees and have had the vote, for almost a century, for instance). On the other hand, there seems to be any number of ways in which this was still contemporary. There remains much to do.
• readandfindout

  (3/5)

  3.5 stars. I enjoyed the overall tone of this book as well as Woolf's writing style (for the most part). There were some sections that were just a little too stream of consciousness for my taste. I had mixed feelings throughout though.
• margaretfield

  (4/5)

  extended essays about women in writing and feminism in general
• vhartpowers

  (1/5)

  I'm only half way through, but thus far, sigh, it's so monotonous and she goes on and on repetitively about men. Alright already, we got it!
  I find it interesting that in just 54 pages she has already mentioned women suicide at least four times and I wonder if she had already been having issues with her illness at that time.
  She does a disservice to women; going mad and killing herself. For all her snooty snubbing about poor people being so inferior to the rich.
  So one must be a rich woman with a room of her own to be intelligent or be an artist of any kind? According to her writing, this is what can be surmised.
  What a long rant against men. . . and women in some parts. She comes off as a very miserable person.
  pg 108 "a poor child in England has little momre hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born." That is it. Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.
  Women , then, have not had a dog's chance of writig poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own.
  
  The limitation of her mind, of her thoughts.
• cavernism

  (5/5)

  A fantastic essay- amazing (and perhaps a bit sad) that the words Woolf wrote about women in 1929 still resonate in 2015.
• thedivineoomba

  (5/5)

  This book is near perfect when Virginia Woolf writes about "Women and Writing". She hits it spot on too - women don't have the resources that men do - so they never get a chance to have a proper education because they aren't allowed in the men only libraries of the time. They don't have their own space or their own income, and she points out this is true for anybody, but women mostly (because men can become "made", while their wives will only move up to more drudgery).It is written with a gentle humour that hides a scathing argument. She uses anecdote to statistics to point blank obviousness to stand against the arguments made by men (that women don't have the mental capacity to write fine poetry, or think, or play politics, or even have a say in the world)- this book, while slim, manages to argue each point and does it with grace.
• dazzyj_1

  (4/5)

  A complex and humane polemic which is a bracing reminder of the winds against which women like Woolf bravely fought in the early twentieth century.
• melissalenhardt

  (5/5)

  This is the first book I've ever read where I am sad I didn't read it earlier in life. It is a feminist book without being militant, angry or bitter. In fact, Woolf delivers her feminism with a smile, wink and a great deal of wit. Her defense of women shouldn't offend men. In fact, I imagine most people would nod along with her. Except fans of Charlotte Bronte. But, because of Woolf's winking demeanor through the entire paper (it was originally a lecture to women at Girton, I believe?) I wonder if she was indeed skewering Bronte for losing her message due to Bronte's "anger" or if Woolf was skewering the critics (men) who said the same about Bronte? I'm not familiar enough with Bronte, her critics, fans or otherwise to say. (I don't remember anger or bitterness in Jane Eyre, but I haven't read it in a few years.) But, I do think Woolf has an excellent point: write without anger or bitterness and your message will come across better.
  
  I listened to the Juliet Stevenson narration of A Room of One's Own. I will listen to anything Juliet Stevenson performs. She is one of the best audiobook narrators out there, especially classics. However, I wish I had the physical book to read along. This book begs for underlining and multiple reads.
• dchaikin_1

  (5/5)

  37. A Room of One's Own (audio) by Virginia Woolfreader: Juliet Stevensonpublished: 1929, 2011 audioformat: 5:02 Libby audiobookacquired: Librarylistened: Jun 20-26rating: 5includes four short stories: Monday or Tuesday, A Haunted House, Kew Gardens, The New DressI think I'm supposed to say something about feminism after reading this, but while I was listening I was too distracted by the way Woolf writes (and the way Juliet Stevenson reads her) to really be thinking about her points. Woolf is a wonderful stylist, who stands apart on many levels from anything written today. Clever, formally structured, elegant, but also everything is designed to bring in the reader's interest, give a universal perspective, and provide a sense of lingual precision. This is my first time reading her, I was kind of in awe at just listening to how she says what she says. She is writing about women and fiction, but really about sexism in general, and what this has meant for women then (1928) and throughout history. At one point she explains that she looked through all the books on women, all written by men, and she feels they can offer her nothing because instead of careful unbiased analysis, these books are all, everyone, pervaded by anger. She has to turn elsewhere, a point that really stuck with me. As for the rest, it was all true, all frustrating, all good to read, but also all stuff I felt we all already know and (at least in our little community here) pretty much all fully agree with. You can read this for 1928 feminism, but my recommendation would be read this to read Woolf in essay form, and be rewarded with literary critiques of the Brontës and Jane Austen, or the impact of WWI on humanity, and also with her views on feminism....Despite the cover Libby uses, I didn't get the Ali Smith introduction, but instead did get four short stories. The New Dress was my favorite and I'll have it in mind when I get to Mrs Dalloway, one of these days.
• lycomayflower

  (4/5)

  I enjoy Virginia Woolf more and more as I get older (and as I have the opportunity to read her books for a second and sometimes third time). I read A Room of One's Own in a masters class on the essay and I suspect I read it once before that in undergrad as well. This time it's for my last doctoral comp. I love her style here, which is discursive but eminently followable. Her insights into the difficulties of being an artist and a woman seem, in some cases, just as relevant today as they were in 1928 (the conflicts involved in the decision to both work and bear children) and in some cases not (the revelation that a woman should be free from financial dependence on a man) and in some cases to apply to both men and women equally today (the notion that a writer should have her own room into which she can retire and be free from interruptions). Altogether, a satisfying and enjoyable read--and one I look forward to reading some day entirely for its own sake rather than for some stated purpose dictated by my studies.
• cbl_tn

  (4/5)

  Based on a series of lectures on women and fiction, Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own examines both women as authors and the portrayal of women in literature written by men. The lectures were given in 1928 and were published a year later, just a decade after women had secured voting rights in Great Britain. Woolf encourages young women to aspire to financial security and space for solitude in order to find their voice. The condition of women that Woolf describes is foreign to me some eighty-five years later, and she might be surprised that I find her exhortation to write to be more limiting than encouraging. She seems to assume that all women would want to write if given the opportunity to do so. There's little encouragement for women whose interests and passions lie elsewhere. This book represents an important step in women's history and women's writing and it rightly deserves the continuing attention it receives. For me, it provided a good point of comparison with the greatly expanded educational and vocational opportunities that were available to me when I came of age.
• turnthepaige

  (4/5)

  It almost seems ridiculous for me, lowly college student, to presume to judge a work of Virginia Woolf's. Sacrilegious, even. But, ah well, my opinion is what it is. Overall, I enjoyed this book, or "extended essay," I suppose it technically is. Writing in 1928, Woolf proposes that a woman must have a room of her own and "five hundred a month," or rather, the ability to properly contemplate and the authority to think for herself, in order to create. More specifically in order to write. Her observations were thought-provoking and sometimes troubling relatable to the state of literature today. A couple of passages in particular startled me with their modern relevance:"Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are 'important'; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes 'trivial'. And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. A scene in a battle-field is more important than a scene in a shop--everywhere and much more subtly the difference of value persists."^^That is so precisely the (Jennifer Weiner) argument being had today over the merits of so-called "chick-lit.""Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children--no human being could stand it. Consider the facts, we said. First there are nine months before the baby is born. Then the baby is born. Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby. After the baby is fed there are certainly five years spent in playing with the baby...If Mrs Seton (the mother), I said, had been making money, what sort of memories would you (the child) have had of games and quarrels? What would you have known of Scotland, and its fine air and cakes and all the rest of it?"^^Again, that is so the modern working mother struggle, in a nutshell. Parentheses in that passage are mine.There were flaws, of course. I don't know how much Woolf's advice could help very poor or non-Western women. Some bits were convoluted/a bit boring. She dissed my girl Charlotte Brontë a bit (in the nicest way possible, and she was probably right).But meh. She's still a genius.
• rayski_1

  (4/5)

  Essentially an essay on feminism. Woolf explores historical women writers and her contemporaries. Looking at their works, their personal situations and compares to male writers in similar times. In particular how men are afforded more advantages to successfully write and very few women are provided any opportunity at all, much less an education. She also looks at how women writers are viewed, specifically looked down on and those who are extremely successful are seen as oddities. Woolf makes cases for far less renowned women writers who were provided little education, lack of a work environment (outside a kitchen) and makes a case for how these women are possibly even more amazing than their more famous contemporaries because of what they can do given their society imposed constraints.The book took a little to get its feel and where Woolf was going, but once you were there it was enjoyable.
• emily_morine

  (5/5)

  In addition to being a seminal feminist text, A Room of One's Own is one of the most finely crafted essays in the English language. Its informality and wittiness, and the seamless, seemingly effortless way it seems to guide the reader from thought to thought, make it easy not to notice the beautiful logical structure underpinning the whole. It also has some gorgeous examples of Woolf's style of psychological free association. Such a beautiful essay!
• kjforester

  (5/5)

  As a woman who has longed to write but never been able to distinguish herself from those around her, this essay resonates. At certain times in the book, I felt like I was sitting in the room listening to her say, "But almost without exception they [women] are shown in their relation to men...And how small a part of a woman's life is that...(page 82). I wonder if women, for all our triumphs over paternalistic constraints in less than a century, have recognized we are truly separate beings and not defined by the labels - daughter, sister, wife, mother, caregiver - we attach to ourselves? Woolf's contention that a woman needs her own income, idleness and privacy to create is as true today as it was in 1929 and yet how many women are able to claim this time without guilt? Her closing words haunt me, "...if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women..." (page 114).
• angelic55blonde

  (5/5)

  This is a must read for anyone, woman or man. It's a great feminist text but her writing is amazing. It's one of the best essays I have ever read.
• juliette07_1

  (5/5)

  Just completed this brilliant essay for A Novel challenge. It was originally presented by Virginia Woolf to undergraduates of Girton and Newnham Colleges, Cambridge, England in 1929. In essence it is centred upon the theme of women and fiction - yet she devlops ideas that move through life, literature, philosophy and society. I loved her reflective thinking and the way in which she linked her thoughts so seamlessly. In my opinion it was five star plus plus and one of the most wonderful reads I have ever experienced - on a par to war and Peace in terms of impact ...I reserved this book from the library and received the Hogarth press edition of 1959 - that is an old book! However I simply must get my own copy - it has so inspired me. There is a sense of compulsion as I read that I knew I would have to read this work again. I savoured every page, idea and reflection. If you are interested in women, their place in society through history and their writings this is a must for you!
• bhowell_35

  (5/5)

  This wonderful book seems to be a rite of passage for every young woman in university. It fascinated me when I read it in University ( a long time ago). Indeed i discovered Virginia Woolf and read all of her books in one summer when I was 19 or 20. The only one that I struggled with and did not particularly enjoy was Orlando. Now my daughter is reading A Room and occasionally reads out passages to me. It is as compelling today as it ever was and it is one of many books that I think I should reread.
• saskreader

  (4/5)

  From the book jacket: " ...for everyone who has ever wondered why it is that women are largely absent from the history books, unless they are queens, mothers or mistresses."
• pamplemousse_1

  (3/5)

  Woolf's witty and charming essay on women and fiction, making the assertion that for a woman to succeed as a novelist she must have an independent income and "a room of her own", i.e. space to write. Along the way, Woolf has some fine things to say about the history of women in the arts, and their position at the time of writing. Although the style is clearly Edwardian in tone -- it is hard to imagine someone writing with this voice today -- I found it both attractive and entertaining to read, and the subject still of great relevance.
• beau0p0laurence

  (4/5)

  a feminist classic every Women's Studies student (formal and informal) should read
• arelenriel

  (3/5)

  This is a must read for anyone in the field of Women's studies.Woolf writes clearly and concisely about how societal expectations can restrict a woman's life so that she has nothing left for herself. Good book. Many interesting viewpoints for debate.
• aliceanna-1

  (4/5)

  An excellent treatise on what it would take and was taking for women to become serious writers.