HW 21: Virginia Woolfe's Chapter One

Dear Kiley,

In Chapter One of Virginia Woolf’s, A room of one’s own, the chapter discusses ‘Women and Fiction’; her main point is “A woman must have money and a room of her won if she is to write fiction” (pg. 4). Woolf says that he will do her best she can to write about as to how she came to this opinion. Woolf then goes on to create a fictional story; Any name is fine, as she sits on the banks of a river at oxford. She begins to talk about fishing, but gets interrupted by at first what she calls a “man’s figure”, but later says “He was a beadle; I was a woman” (pg 6), he reminds her that woman are not allowed to walk on the grass, so she heads back to the path. She begins thinking about her surroundings and it makes her think about an essay about revisiting Oxbridge by Charles Lamb, so when she goes to the library to find it, a man quietly said to her “ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction” (pg.8), making her leave in anger. She gets distracted by music playing off in the distance, when everyone form the university goes inside she decides to stay out, because she doesn’t feel right. She goes on to talk about Oxbridge and its history, she goes on to talk about the lunch served (pg. 10-11), but later gets distracted when she sees “a cat without a tail” (pg 11). Later she talks about another meal that she had, comparing it to the luncheon that was earlier on, except she speaks in a more negative way about this one, with having less privileges. The narrator goes on to talk to Mary Seton, wondering what their mothers were doing in the past that they could not leave any money behind for them. When summarizing chapter one a lot of it talks about men Vs. women, in my opinion.
This reading could be considered important because it shows how women can be looked down on, and have more rules that apply to them, where as men don’t. As my reaction to this reading, I think that it’s a little bit harder to understand the reading, because it really makes you think. Not everything it literal, so you have to read things over more than once, which to me makes it a harder reading, but once understood, it can be interesting.