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lyssaczernek's review against another edition
3.0
A bit confusing and meandering, but overall a good message and important to read. Class discussion has helped me understand the text more which has been super helpful.
dharma_s's review against another edition
5.0
It's 2024!!
Okay, so, this book...it just blew my mind. I honestly think that Woolf is a genius. This book made me think so deeply, so much in fact that it took me about a week to finish a 100 page book. Every few lines I would stop and I would just think, or passionately share my thoughts with the closest person, whether or not they wanted to hear it. I absolutely adore this book, and I can see this book becoming something that I come back to many times, as I have merely scratched the surface of this book and what it has to offer.
Okay, so, this book...it just blew my mind. I honestly think that Woolf is a genius. This book made me think so deeply, so much in fact that it took me about a week to finish a 100 page book. Every few lines I would stop and I would just think, or passionately share my thoughts with the closest person, whether or not they wanted to hear it. I absolutely adore this book, and I can see this book becoming something that I come back to many times, as I have merely scratched the surface of this book and what it has to offer.
lola719's review against another edition
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
A must read for any woman who wishes to write.
selxnee_'s review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
quenchgum's review against another edition
5.0
I've had the pleasure to read this book online, where it's been easier for me to collect my favorite quotes as I read through it. Here are some of my favorites:
"Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat."
"I thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect on tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. A thousand stars were flashing across the blues wastes of the sky. One seemed alone with an inscrutable society. All human beings were laid asleep--prone, horizontal, dumb. Nobody seemed stirring in the streets of Oxbridge. Even the door of the hotel sprang open at the touch of an invisible hand--not a boots was sitting up to light me to bed, it was so late."
"Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control. They too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with. Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great. True, they had money and power, but only at the cost of harbouring in their breasts an eagle, a vulture, for ever tearing the liver out and plucking at the lungs--the instinct for possession, the rage for acquisition which drives them to desire other people's fields and goods perpetually; to make frontiers and flags; battleships and poison gas; to offer up their own lives and their children's lives."
"What is meant by 'reality'? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable--now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech--and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us. So at least I infer from reading Lear or Emma or La Recherche du Temps Perdu. For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life."
"Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat."
"I thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect on tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. A thousand stars were flashing across the blues wastes of the sky. One seemed alone with an inscrutable society. All human beings were laid asleep--prone, horizontal, dumb. Nobody seemed stirring in the streets of Oxbridge. Even the door of the hotel sprang open at the touch of an invisible hand--not a boots was sitting up to light me to bed, it was so late."
"Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control. They too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with. Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great. True, they had money and power, but only at the cost of harbouring in their breasts an eagle, a vulture, for ever tearing the liver out and plucking at the lungs--the instinct for possession, the rage for acquisition which drives them to desire other people's fields and goods perpetually; to make frontiers and flags; battleships and poison gas; to offer up their own lives and their children's lives."
"What is meant by 'reality'? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable--now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech--and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us. So at least I infer from reading Lear or Emma or La Recherche du Temps Perdu. For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life."
champers4days's review against another edition
5.0
Just 112 pages of non-fiction text about Woman and Fiction and I am sold! A Room of One’s Own is amazing and absolutely falls into the category of books that every woman (if not ever person!) should read. Furthermore, the style of writing is entirely perfect - I officially have a new obsession in the form of Virginia Woolf!!!
harry_lemon's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
5⭐
Ms. Virginia Woolf: F*ck the patriarchy!
If you are a writer, specifically non-hetero cis white male, you absolutely need to read this book! Woolf not only tells a story within this work, but inspires the reader to create their own and speak with their voice. This work shines as a beacon for those who are unsure of what story they are telling; she reminds them that what you have to say is important. Doubt, insecurity and anxiety are the killers that have been instilled because of the male tradition. She speaks powerfully and inspiringly, almost as though it were a call to action. Fantastic, I can't recommend this enough.
Ms. Virginia Woolf: F*ck the patriarchy!
If you are a writer, specifically non-hetero cis white male, you absolutely need to read this book! Woolf not only tells a story within this work, but inspires the reader to create their own and speak with their voice. This work shines as a beacon for those who are unsure of what story they are telling; she reminds them that what you have to say is important. Doubt, insecurity and anxiety are the killers that have been instilled because of the male tradition. She speaks powerfully and inspiringly, almost as though it were a call to action. Fantastic, I can't recommend this enough.
adelevarley's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting view on women in the early 20th century. Although I found it quite boring, dated, and prejudiced at times, Woolf makes many interesting comparisons. My favorites were her reflections on women in writing through “Shakespeare’s sister” and other comparisons real and imaginary.