Description of the Techniques that Virginia Woolf Employed to Put Her Arguments in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and Shakespeare's Sister.

 

INTRODUCTION TO ‘A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN’ BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

‘A Room of One's Own’ by Virginia Woolf is an extended essay. Actually, this essay is based on her two lectures delivered in October 1928 at two of women’s constituent colleges named Newnham College and Girton College under the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. The essay first published as a book in September 1929. In her essay, Woolf uses metaphors to explore social injustices and she comments on women's lack of free expression. For example, she uses metaphor of a fish to explain her most essential point, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction".

Figure-1: The original cover of the book, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf.

In one section of this essay, Woolf invents a fictional character, Judith, as Shakespeare's sister, to illustrate that a woman with same gift that Shakespeare has would have been denied the opportunity to develop them because of only being a woman. Judith commits suicide, at last. The extended study regarding Judith and Woolf’s fictional invention is discussed in subsequent pages.

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE AUTHOR

Virginia Woolf was one of the most important modernist English writers of 20th century. She is the pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. She born in London, England in 1882 and died in Lewes, England in 1941 at the age of 59. Woolf was married to Leonard Sidney Woolf, a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant.

Figure-02: Portrait of Virginia Woolf in 1907 at the Age of 25.

Some of Woolf’s notable works are, Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), A Room of One’s Own (1929) etc.

Throughout her life, Woolf was troubled by mental illness. She attempted suicide at least thrice. Her illness has the same symptoms that of bipolar disorder. In 1941, Woolf died by drowning herself in the River Ouse at Lewes, England.

In her suicide note, addressed to her husband, she wrote: “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight it any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know.”

THE TECHNIQUES THAT VIRGINIA WOOLF EMPLOYED TO PUT HER ARGUMENTS IN ‘A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN’

As early discussed, Virginia Woolf is a prolific modernist and feminist writer of the 20th century. She is the first woman writer who has adopted a female aesthetic for her writings. In her highly influential critical essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ which was entitled ‘Women and Fiction’ in earlier drafts, Virginia Woolf studied the cultural, economic and educational disabilities within the male-controlled system that prevent women from realizing their creative potential. The main argument of A Room of One’s Own is that, ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. Some of her techniques that Virginia Woolf employed to put her arguments in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ is discussed below:

1. Examining the Career of Women Authors.

Virginia Woolf examines the careers and works of women authors like Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Bronte sisters and argued that the patriarchal (male-controlled) education system in which system women read, have to read from men’s point of view. The system forcibly makes women adopt the aesthetics and literary values, created by male authors and critics within the patriarchal system.

2. Inventing Fictional Characters.

Although A Room of One’s Own is an essay, Woolf created different characters to give her essay life that of a novel. With the character Judith (Shakespeare’s fictional sister), Woolf illustrated that a woman with Shakespeare’s faculties would have been denied the opportunities that Shakespeare enjoyed. She gives references to different writers and created some fictional characters. The narrator of A Room of One’s Own begins by telling of her experience of visiting

an Oxbridge college where she was refused access to the library because of her gender. Woolf wrote, ‘Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.’ In fact, the statement is true somehow even in the present world.

3. Giving Point of View as A Narrator.

Woolf plays fast and loose with her narrative technique in ‘A Room of One's Own’. At first, Virginia Woolf is speaking as herself. Before long, the "I" becomes Mary Beton. As she wrote: But even that "I" isn't important: "call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance". 

Actually, her narrative technique is a common technique as she does in much of her other writing. After all, her experiences were pretty similar to Mary Beton's.
In fact, Virginia Woolf knew the limitations of a first-person narrator: it's too easy for people to say that your experiences aren't universal. So, she changed herself into everywoman Mary Beton or Mary Seton or Mary Carmichael and name of woman. 

4. Using Stream of Consciousness.

Just same as Woolf’s most of writings, she uses the technique of Stream of Consciousness to build her argument in ‘A Room of One's Own’. In this essay, Woolf contrasts the wealth and privilege of men's colleges to the poverty of women's colleges and from this argues that, lack of money and space hinders women's ability to achieve and create something that of a man.

5. Categorizing Women with Working Class People.

The categorization of middle-class women like herself with the working classes may seem awkward. But, in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ Woolf proposes that women be understood as a separate class altogether. She compares women’s difficulty with the working classes because of their material poverty, even among the middle and upper classes. Woolf mentioned Robert Burns (the Ploughman Poet) who was born into a farming family and raised on a smallholding.

UNIQUE WRITING STYLE OF VIRGINIA WOOLF IN ‘A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN’

If most books show us a totally finished building with a nice outlook, Woolf is giving us a tour of the construction site. Mostly, authors work hard to make us forget that the fictional character is just words on the page. But here's Woolf, introducing her fictional narrator: "Call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, or by any name you please - it is not a matter of any importance" because "Mary" is "only a suitable term for somebody who has no real being"

And when we get to Fernham, Woolf pauses again to remind us that she's making this story up: "I dare not forfeit your respect and imperil the fair name of fiction by changing the season". Just as we're ready to kick back and enjoy the story, she reminds us that she's in-charge. She's not changing the season because it would be shaking to us, but she could if she wanted to.

An author would simply introduce the character, Woolf is more interested in showing us the inner workings of fiction than trying to get us to suspend disbelief. 

So, when we say this style is "self-conscious," by the way, we don't mean that Woolf is shy, or anything. We mean that the style of writing is self-conscious: as we read, the text keeps reminding you that we're reading a piece of fiction created by another person. So, what does this have to do with Women and Fiction?

Woolf's insistence on the five hundred pounds a year and the private room are about the very practical things that make fiction-writing possible. So maybe this self-conscious style is a kind of practical illustration of the writer's task. We're not just reading a story; we're seeing how a writer works.

THE INVENTION OF A FICTIONAL CHARACTER NAMED JUDITH, AS SHAKESPEARE’S SISTER

I would like to start this section with two questions. Have we ever thought of Shakespeare having a sister? If she was as talented as Shakespeare, would she get the equal acknowledgement and praise as Shakespeare received? Perhaps, we never thought of it in that way. But Virginia Woolf, who believed in woman empowerment and equality, strongly thought of it. She invented some fictional characters in her essay, ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and Judith, William Shakespeare’s fictional sister is the significant one.

1. General Discussion regarding Shakespeare’s Sister.

Woolf structures these statements logically: “cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare.” (No woman could write like Shakespeare) Woolf exposes the “double standards” maintained in a society and the unequal treatment meted out to women. She argues that it would have been completely impossible for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare went to the grammar school and may have learnt Latin- (Ovid, Virgil and Horace) and the elements of grammar and logic. He was a wild boy who poached rabbits, shot a deer and had married a woman in the neighborhood and fathered a child at a young age. Then he escaped from his responsibilities and went to London in search of his better fortune. He had a taste for theatre. He began his career by holding horses at the stage door. Soon he got work in the theatre. He became a successful actor, lived at the hub of the universe, meeting and knowing people around and practiced his art and exercised his wits in the streets. He even got access to the palace of the queen. Virginia Woolf mentions to the privileges enjoyed by the male child. Shakespeare was free to study, seek sexual experience, leave home and act and write.

On the other hand, Shakespeare’s wonderfully and extraordinarily gifted sister Judith remained at home. She was as adventurous, as enthusiastic, as wild, as imaginative, as eager, as creative, as lively and as agog to see the world as he was. But she was even not sent to school Also, she had no chance of learning grammar and logic and was not allowed to read Horace and Virgil. Whenever she picked up a book to read, her parents would discourage her-they told her to mend the stockings and not to the moon about with books and papers.

Judith is rebuked by her parents if she happens to pick up a book, as she is inevitably abandoning some household responsibilities to which she should be attending. Judith confronts prohibitions where ever she turns.  She scribbled some pages secretly but she hid them or set fire to them. In those days, women were not supposed to be writers, so they had to hide or blot out what they had written.

Before Judith was out of her teens, she was engaged to the son of a neighboring wool-stapler’s son. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her at that time. In consequence, she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ended to scold her and begged her not to shame him and hurt him in this matter of her marriage. Unable to endure the condition, she made a small parcel of her belongings and eloped from home to London. She was not even seventeen. She was very talented and had a taste for theatre just like her brother Shakespeare. 

She wanted to act but men laughed at her, the manager shouted something about poodles dancing and women acting, and uttered “No woman could possibly be an actress”. She couldn’t even seek dinner in a tavern. She was left alone and was devoid of food and shelter.

The manager laughs at the very idea of women acting, he finds it awkward and disgusting. It must be remembered that in Shakespeare’s time women’s role was acted by young boys.

Judith had a genius for fiction. Then she longed to write about the lives of men and women and their ways of life around her. She was very young, looked exactly like Shakespeare, with the same grey eye. Finally, Nick Greene, the actor-manager took pity on her. But what was actually happened? She was sexually abused by him regularly. She made pregnant with his child. Although, she eloped from home to become an actress, writer as her brother Shakespeare, but the man-controlled society did not allow her to be as she desires. Finally, unable to cope up with the situation, Judith killed herself and was buried somewhere as an insignificant character.

2. Summary of Shakespeare’s Sister.

This would be the plight of a woman in Shakespeare’s day who had had Shakespeare’s genius. Virginia Woolf says that the exploitation of women is not a past event, it happens in her own time.

According to Professor Trevelyan, a woman’s work began before they were out of the nursery. They were forced by the parents and compelled by society by the power of laws and customs. So, a woman couldn’t demonstrate her genius

But Woolf states that genius of a sort must have existed among the working classes and among women. Emily Bronte and Robert Burns proves its presence now and then- their works were never received any recognition or approval by the general public as the society is essentially patriarchal.
Women with unusual talents and gifts were labelled as witches. Woolf guesses that the earlier poems whose authors were unknown may be compositions by women as women writers were forced to use male pseudonyms to veil their identity as women writers. Men had an instinctive desire for fame and ownership, so women writers were ignored.

A woman who aspires to be a writer is caught between many contradictory and conflicting difficulties. Even in the nineteenth century, a woman was not encouraged to be an artist. She was ducked, suppressed, muted, tortured, snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted. Her mind had been stressed and her vitality lowered.

The woman who was born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, was unhappy, a woman at fighting against herself. Any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would have gone crazed, shot herself or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half-witch, half wizard feared and mocked at.

Figure-3: A Statue in Bronze of Virginia Woolf Sitting on the Riverside in

Richmond-on-Thames, London

CONCLUSION

‘A Room of One's Own’ is one of the masterpieces of Virginia Woolf. The dramatic setting of is that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She advances the thesis that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the thinking that led her to adopt this thesis. She dramatizes that mental process in the character of an Imaginary Narrator. She uses Stream of Consciousness in this essay.

Most importantly she adopts the technique of creating some fictional characters. Shakespeare’s Sister is one of them who was a highly gifted girl, had tried to use her gift for poetry but had been so disappointed and hindered by other people. She might have been tortured and pulled asunder by her opposing instincts. She must have lost her sanity and health. The general belief that women should walk in the shadow of men hastily may be a charm invented by a certain society for unknown reasons, but it was not at all inevitable. Chastity had then and even now had religious importance in a woman’s life. It was impossible to survive in the sixteenth century. If Judith survived, whatever she had written would have been twisted and distorted. Her work would have gone unsigned, unidentified and unrecognized.

Finally, we can conclude with the remark that, Virginia Woolf Employed some unique and noteworthy technique to put her arguments in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ and for this essay, she will be remembered to the world forever.

Note: This text is based on random research.