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An essay for the ages.	1	3	02/05/2008 06:48AM

Kelly rated it:

(review of isbn 0141183535)

05/29/08

bookshelves: brit-lit, favorites, fiction, worth-rereading

Every woman should read this. Yes, everyone who told me that, you were absolutely right. It is a little book, but it will completely revitalize your outlook on life. How many 113 page books and/or hour long lectures (the original format of this text) can say that?

This is Woolf's "Fuck the patriarchy," book, but it is of course done in an overtly polite, very British way- all the while sticking it to them behind their backs until she brings up her fountain pen and stabs them right b...more Every woman should read this. Yes, everyone who told me that, you were absolutely right. It is a little book, but it will completely revitalize your outlook on life. How many 113 page books and/or hour long lectures (the original format of this text) can say that?

This is Woolf's "Fuck the patriarchy," book, but it is of course done in an overtly polite, very British way- all the while sticking it to them behind their backs until she brings up her fountain pen and stabs them right between the eyes. She manages, somehow, to make this a work of Romantic sensibility, and yet fully modern, piercing, and absolutely vital.

Woolf was asked to give a speech on "Women and fiction," and ends up with an entire philosophy on the creative spirit, though with special attention to that of women, of course. Her thesis is simply that women must have a fixed income (500 pounds a year in her lucky times) and a room of her own with a lock on the door. It is only with independence and solitude that women will finally be free to create, after all these centuries of being forced to do as men please because they support them, and to work in the middle of a drawing room with a thousand practical interruptions, ten children to see to, and a sheet of blotting paper to cover the shame of wasting her time with "scribbles," (as Jane Austen did whenever someone outside the family came into the room) when there was a house to keep and a family to raise. She also shows the creative powers of women tortured and hidden through the allegory of Shakespeare's sister, who never had a chance to express her genius and killed herself after being utterly defeated at every turn.

Woolf makes sure to take the reader through the history of women writers, and makes sure that the reader cannot fail to see how brief it is, and how limited, and why. She makes sure that all modern women should acknowledge their ancestors who fought for five minutes and a few pieces of paper to jot down lines of Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, or Pride and Prejudice. She makes sure that women know that they can reject the framework, the form, down to the very sentences that are given to them by men, to find their own voice. A voice that should be, ultimately, sexless. In her view, one should be "man-womanly," or "woman-manly," to write enduring classics. She doesn't let women down easy, either. The end of the book points out all the advantages young women have today (even in 1929) and yet they still don't run countries, wars, or companies, and there's no excuse for that. It's an exhortation to not squander everything the women's movement fought for.

I probably could have said this in a much shorter way: "Fuck the patriarchy, find your own way and your own voice in life, seize the day, get off your ass and DO something. How dare you waste the opportunities that so many others would have died to have."

Inspiring words on any topic, I think. I think I'll keep this by my bedside to reach for when I feel discouraged or lazy or bitter about my future or my current situation in life....less

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Trevor rated it:

(review of isbn 0141183535)

01/02/08

There are so many books that one ‘just knows’ what they are going to be about. I have always ‘known’ about this book and ‘knew’ what it would be about. Feminist rant, right? Oh, these people do so preach to the choir, don’t they? Why do they hate men so much? In the end they are no different to the male chauvinists they are attacking. Why can’t they just be more even handed?

That none of this is the case, of course, does not matter at all, because reiterating received wisdom s...more There are so many books that one ‘just knows’ what they are going to be about. I have always ‘known’ about this book and ‘knew’ what it would be about. Feminist rant, right? Oh, these people do so preach to the choir, don’t they? Why do they hate men so much? In the end they are no different to the male chauvinists they are attacking. Why can’t they just be more even handed?

That none of this is the case, of course, does not matter at all, because reiterating received wisdom seems to be all that is necessary today – read 99% of the critiques of The God Delusion and the horrifying thing you will find is either a mindless acceptance or a mindless rejection of Dawkins. It is enough to fill me with near complete despair.

The blurb on the back of the Penguin edition of this book says that this is “one of the greatest feminist polemics of the century”. There is a quote too from Hermione Lee (apparently, Woolf’s greatest biographer) which reads, “fierce, energetic, humourous”. Look, I really loved this book and would recommend it whole-heartedly – but it is none of those things.

A polemic is a strong verbal or written attack – to say this book is even an attack is really stretching the friendship. This is the most mild of books. Its central argument is that women need money of their own and a room of their own, with a lock on the door, if they want to write. How can one really be ‘fierce’ if that is all one is going to argue? She ends with a quote from a man who provides a list of the greatest poets of the last couple of hundred years (c.1900) of which Keats was the only one who was not either a university person or of independent means.

So, I guess her recommendation is that if you want to write you need to be independently wealthy – something I haven’t quite achieved yet. But eminently sensible advice all the same.

This book is based on a series of lectures she gave to women at Cambridge Uni on Women and Fiction and it is a delight that rather then make this a polemic she actually makes this a work of fiction – creating a series of Marys who go off into the world and be idol – as this is one of the criteria necessary for writing great fiction (no matter what you genitalia are up to) and part of the reason why being wealthy helps.

She also says that the best fiction is not written by men or women, but by men or women who have lost a sense that they are writing as men or women. That writing that focuses too closely on explaining past hurts – however well justified – ends up being bad writing. That fiction, when it is done properly, has a truth of its own that ought to be authentic and followed by the writer despite any agenda of the writer. This is such a lovely idea – and much more interestingly about fiction than about women. And this is as it ought to be.

Some of Woolf’s writing – I’ve also just finish reading To the Lighthouse – feels heavy now, some of her paragraphs go for three pages and that can make reading her feel a bit of a struggle – but she writes so beautifully and has the annoying habit of making sense that it is no wonder that so many people have become so annoyed with her.

In the end I think it is only possible for people to say this is a fierce book or a polemic on the basis of their views, not Virginia’s. Her views on feminism expressed in the book today seem rather depressingly self-evident and expressed in a light and very careful way. But to a society that is not prepared to listen even the mildest expression of unpopular views will seem harsh, polemical and, well, just plain wrong.

Not the book I suspected, infinitely better than that.
...less

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Molly rated it:

(review of isbn 0141183535)

03/09/07

Read in October, 2005

recommends it for: no one

This book is absolutely infuriating!!! (Note the 3 exclamation marks.) Woolf claims that all a woman needs to write is a room and a fixed income. That's not the infuriating part. She goes on to attack all of her fellow female writers, claiming that their opinions about the opposite sex wrecked their novels--that these women (her comments on Bronte were especially enraging) wrote from anger or other emotions and didn't allow the true nature of their characters to come through. Being a writer i...more

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