Introduction
Virginia Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own, is a landmark of twentieth-century feminist fiction (Woolf, 2010). For several years, women were unvoiced and did in the field of literature. This was due to the circumstance that they had no social and material conditions required for the writing of literature. This essay unlocks how women began writing in a stimulating assessment of the combined and material stipulations involved in the writing of literature. These conditions -leisure time, privacy, and financial independence- have an impact in the whole process of literature production.
Woolf informs us that a woman must have the monetary means and her own room if she is to have a breakthrough in any writing venture. Traditionally, women have lacked these conditions that build up the basic requirements for literature writing, this has changed though. Woolf says that currently, she has found that women are writing virtually as many books as men, and they are not only novels, she says, “There are books on all sorts of subjects which a generation ago no woman could have touched” (Woolf, chapt. 5). Woolf found so little information about the everyday lives of women that she comes to decisions to recreate their being by thoughts and decided to initiate a number of confrontational, sociological and artistic approaches to achieve this. She evaluates not only the situation of women’s own literature, but also the state of research- hypothetical and chronological- concerning women.
In A Simple Poem for Virginia Woolf, Bronwen Wallace argues in almost the same manner as Woolf. In her poem, it is clear that women had insufficient social and material conditions required for the writing of literature. They were either in the kitchen, looking after their children and family at large, or knitting embroideries among other tasks. All these denied them potential to increase the gift for their art of literature writing. The little time they could spare was used to write some literature though this time was not sufficient to bring out the inner self and the art needed in literature writing. This is illustrated in the poem when she writes “…you know the kind we women writers write these days in our own rooms on our own time…” (Wallace, line 2).
Analysis
Woolf employs the first person narrative in her composition to present a classified feeling to induce feelings of consideration and profound expression about the situation of women, she is speaking directly to the reader. Wallace also applies the same style in her poem A Simple Poem for Virginia Woolf as indicated in lines 1-5. She is speaking directly to the readers as the whole poem is the first person narrative.
Throughout olden times, female writers have not been odd to insensitive condemnation considering their artistic occupations. Some are privileged to even accept such condemnation; many have not accomplished achievement in allotting their works with the humankind. Woolf tackles the dilemma of the woman essayist, particularly throughout the Elizabethan time era of England (Woolf, chapt. 5). She informs the audience of how oppressive and complex this time age was for women. Through illustrations and other fictional practices, she presents her ideas in an organized, logical and influential approach to the reader. Wallace’ poem expresses the difficulties experienced by women writers when she says, ‘I really wanted not something to tangle in domestic life the way Jane Austen’s novels tangled with her knitting her embroidery whatever it was she hid them under’ (Wallace, Lines 30-35).
The society had no meaningful place for women. Most of the writing was left to men as they had all the social and material conditions required for the writing of literature. From the medieval times, men were considered more superior than the women and this led to the women being considered inferior and undermined in all they did and this killed the potential abilities of women in constructive ideas, including the art of literature writing. Wallace illustrates this in her poem when she says, ‘They wouldn’t let me in because I wasn’t her husband or her father or her mother, I wasn’t family, I was just her friend and the friendship of women wasn’t mentioned in hospital policy’ (Wallace, line 58-62).
Women were rarely involved in community development, in fact, there were no policies to govern them. Woolf gives us a small example in reading investigational writing (like Woolf’s own), reminding us that she has every right to test new structures and styles, as long as she is generating something innovative rather than simply demolishing what has gone before. Knowing that she has the authority to attempt new forms and styles it gives her strength to go further on with writing. (Woolf, chapter 6)
Wallace accepts this concept and writes ‘after all and I wasn’t going to make excuses for being a woman blaming years of silence for leaving us’ (Wallace, Line 77-79).
Woolf draws awareness to the thought that there is an ordinary way for women to put pen to paper and this is a woman’s characteristic decree.She is also open to the idea that even that naturalness may be previously conditional. As women revolutionize, and as their social responsibilities and conditional truths develop, as seen in the present world, what is ordinary to women will most likely change as well. Such a change wil be positive and the woman may begin using writing as an art rather than as a method of self-expression, but it must be as flexible and evolving as women themselves. (Woolf, chapter 6) Wallace on the other hand states
But that’s what got me started I suppose, wanting to write a gesture of friendship for a woman writer for Virginia Woolf and thinking I could do it easily separating the words from the lives they come from that’s what a good poem should do (Wallace, line 69-76)
Women have a creative power that differs substantially from that of men, one that has found expression, even in previous ages, in non-literary ways. She disputes that culture should bring out those dissimilarities rather than implementing similarity, and so recognize and improve the prosperity and diversity of human culture. (Woolf, chapter, 6) Wallace also shows that women have a creative power that differs substantially from that of men, she writes,
the complications of women’s friendships or the immeasurable rough details of an everyday woman’s life that never emerge in poems at all, yet, even as I write these words those ordinary details intrude between the poem I meant to write and this one where the delicate faces of my children, faces of friends, of women I have never even seen glow on the blank pages and deeper than any silence (Wallace, line 84-96).
Conclusion
There must be independence and there must be calmness of mind in the art of literature, the way of the mind’s very functioning. Such a mind would be logically imaginative, radiant, and complete. While going against this perfect condition, Woolf sees her own age as more plainly sex-conscious than any other in history and states that this fact has provoked in men an extraordinary desire for self-expression. Woolf sums up her dispute that logical liberty depends upon material objects.
The undermining of women from the medieval times makes Woolf to note the importance of money and a room of one’s own in order to excel in writing “(Woolf, chapter 6). She asserts that Good writing is good for society, and women have got even a better ability than men in literature writing. She advises women to write all genres of books and not just fiction and asks them never to forget their current gains as well as the hardships of their history, and to see these gains not only as valuable, but as ingredients of the important fundamentals for future female authors. It is advisable that the society should encourage women friendship as it is through this friendship that the art of literature writing can be explored and expressed.
References
Wallace, Bronwen. A Simple Poem for Virginia Woolf.2006.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Orlando Florida: Harcourt Brace and company 1929.