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itslenchy's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
nkz21752's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
anjcgd's review against another edition
3.0
March 2023 with slowreaders.bookclub https://www.instagram.com/slowreaders.bookclub/?next=%2F
Important literature. But it wasn’t for me.
Yes women needs room of their own, but not all women are privilege as the author.
We can build a room of one’s own.
Important literature. But it wasn’t for me.
Yes women needs room of their own, but not all women are privilege as the author.
We can build a room of one’s own.
beabookly's review against another edition
5.0
Virginia Woolf is extremely famous and well-recognized, most likely from her creative metaphors and ideas that were previously unthought of. Her extended essay, “A Room of One’s Own”, was one of those ideas. She spoke freely on feminism utilizing Shakespeare’s fictional sister who faced a lot of misogyny in the text.
Hypothetically, in Woolf’s extended essay, Shakespeare’s sister is just as talented and just as smart, but she does not gain any recognition due to her sex. “… it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are 'important'; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes 'trivial',” Woolf knows that if she loves fashion or focuses on shopping that she is labeled vain and it would completely discredit her work. Even a vanity has such a name because women are vain for caring about appearances. “…these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction.” The ideas published in literature, in media, in marketing all are based on something in life. Values are transferred from reality to fiction, and vice versa.
The next piece of Woolf’s writing I particularly want to speak about is this, “She met that criticism as her temperament dictated, with docility and diffidence, or with anger and emphasis. It does not matter which it was; she was thinking of something other than the thing itself. Down comes her book upon our heads. There was a flaw in the centre of it. And I thought of all the women's novels that lie scattered, like small pock-marked apples in an orchard, about the second-hand book shops of London. It was the flaw in the centre that had rotted them. She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others.” Woolf mentions in passing the observation that women’s literature is societally less valued than men’s. They are just considered less credible, less important, less relevant. Some of that, with classic literature writers in particular, is due to laws and regulations affecting women a century or two ago. Men in classic literature were so much more recognized historically. Woolf published this in 1929, and not much she spoke about is truly different in 2024. “They wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal pedagogue—write this, think that. They alone were deaf to that persistent voice, now grumbling, now patronizing, now domineering, … that voice which cannot let women alone, but must be at them, like some too-conscientious governess, adjuring them … to be refined; dragging even into the criticism of poetry criticism of sex; admonishing them, if they would be good and win, as I suppose, some shiny prize, to keep within certain limits which the gentleman in question thinks suitable—'... female novelists should only aspire to excellence by courageously acknowledging the limitations of their sex'.”
The way Woolf speaks about feminism is revolutionary for the time and just extremely accurate even though it is almost a century apart now.
Hypothetically, in Woolf’s extended essay, Shakespeare’s sister is just as talented and just as smart, but she does not gain any recognition due to her sex. “… it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are 'important'; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes 'trivial',” Woolf knows that if she loves fashion or focuses on shopping that she is labeled vain and it would completely discredit her work. Even a vanity has such a name because women are vain for caring about appearances. “…these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction.” The ideas published in literature, in media, in marketing all are based on something in life. Values are transferred from reality to fiction, and vice versa.
The next piece of Woolf’s writing I particularly want to speak about is this, “She met that criticism as her temperament dictated, with docility and diffidence, or with anger and emphasis. It does not matter which it was; she was thinking of something other than the thing itself. Down comes her book upon our heads. There was a flaw in the centre of it. And I thought of all the women's novels that lie scattered, like small pock-marked apples in an orchard, about the second-hand book shops of London. It was the flaw in the centre that had rotted them. She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others.” Woolf mentions in passing the observation that women’s literature is societally less valued than men’s. They are just considered less credible, less important, less relevant. Some of that, with classic literature writers in particular, is due to laws and regulations affecting women a century or two ago. Men in classic literature were so much more recognized historically. Woolf published this in 1929, and not much she spoke about is truly different in 2024. “They wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal pedagogue—write this, think that. They alone were deaf to that persistent voice, now grumbling, now patronizing, now domineering, … that voice which cannot let women alone, but must be at them, like some too-conscientious governess, adjuring them … to be refined; dragging even into the criticism of poetry criticism of sex; admonishing them, if they would be good and win, as I suppose, some shiny prize, to keep within certain limits which the gentleman in question thinks suitable—'... female novelists should only aspire to excellence by courageously acknowledging the limitations of their sex'.”
The way Woolf speaks about feminism is revolutionary for the time and just extremely accurate even though it is almost a century apart now.
karenholmes's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of those books that need a few rereadings along your life because you may change, but its message ressonates with every period in life.
cxfvsion's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
dohaadel's review against another edition
2.0
She talks too much
Contemplates too much
Repeats ideas often
And the whole book can be summed up in two sentences: women need to be earning money and having a closed room to be able to create, duh!
Contemplates too much
Repeats ideas often
And the whole book can be summed up in two sentences: women need to be earning money and having a closed room to be able to create, duh!