Tuesday, May 22, 2012

How does Virginia Woolf conceive of the relationship between economic independence and literary production in A Room of One's Own?

Woolf builds a careful and convincing argument that economic independence is necessary for literary production. In A Room of One's Own, she focuses on illustrating all the small details that are different between the life of a man and the life of a woman in her society to build a cumulative picture of male privilege versus female want. She discusses the university library that men can enter but women cannot. She compares the fine food and wine at the men's colleges to the austere mutton and water at the women's colleges. She shows that men have very often taken it for granted that they will have private space in which to work, whereas women seldom are afforded the same luxury. By doing this, Woolf paints a picture that shows how difficult it is for women to produce literature—especially good literature—because they lack the financial independence and privacy to do so.
Woolf is countering arguments that were still prevalent in the 1920s that women did not produce great literature at the same rate as men because they were intellectually inferior. She argues that the problem is not innate inferiority but manufactured, systemic economic inferiority under which societal wealth is unthinkingly given to men. Give a woman the same economic and social privileges as men, such as a room of her own, and they will produce fine literature at the same rate as men.

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