Chapter One Analysis

Women and Writing...


Two concepts that now seem to go hand in hand, in 1928 when Virginia Woolf braved this topic, had received little serious attention. The title and subject, “A Room of One’s Own” represents the idea that women at this time, in order to have enough security and privacy to write, must have a room of their own (and their own money).



Chapter one begins with the word “but” – a word that separates two contradicting ideas in a sentence – which immediately illuminates the contrarian temperament of the essay. Women were discriminated against in almost all aspects of education; from the university to the library, dinner and the lawn, the narrator is disallowed access to, is interrupted while speaking, and is overall treated as, and she recognizes that she is an inferior citizen, given inferior accommodations, who (back to her thesis) needs money and privacy to write.



Woolf insists that the "I" of the book is not the author, but rather a narrator persona.

"I is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being"; "call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, or by any name you please."

Whereas most of us would accredit the mental process of generating new ideas, the narrator frequently addresses the idea of wealth as a main ingredient for creativity. This had to do with the fact that the men of her time controlled the money, and therefore had fewer obstacles, as they could also manage the institutions that kept their higher positions intact, and instead celebrated the luxury of focusing on higher thinking, while the women did reproductive labor - cooked, cleaned, and bearing and raising children.

From Chapter One forward, Virginia Woolf uses light and purity as a metaphor for brilliance; or more frequently as she writes, “incandescence” is associated with genius. As the narrator outlines, money=freedom, while light=genius. She often admires the sky and the brilliant light it bestows.