Outlook on Women and Fiction
“A women must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” would be one of the most influential quotes in a Room of Ones Own. (Woolf, 2092) Virginia Woolf is a powerful feminist writer who released this work in 1929; this time period consisted of feminist movements. Woolf speaks on the issues that women are facing no only as writers of fiction, but as mothers and wives who have to live up to standards that are presented by society. Woolf examines that there is more important facts about feminism other than political or no-political beliefs. The title can be a fine representation of what Virginia Woolf’s argument will be throughout her story. She forms her …show more content…
Before analyzing Woolf’s thesis of women and fiction, it serves best to exhibit the history of the early 19th century Feminism movement. This movement included an abundance of campaigns that focused on women’s reproductive rights, equal pay, right to own property, sexual violence, women’s suffrage etc. The Women’s movement had a drastic effect on the Western society, with issues like rights to property and rights to control her own child bearing body. Women have been conformed to live up to societal ideas of what a “woman” should follow or how she should be treated. Women were given limited to no access to equal pay in the workforce and weren’t permitted to acquire university level education. The fact that women were deprived of their rights to have control over their bodies and not given access to contraception, shows how inferior to society and man women were. Within Woolf’s extensive essay she produces insight on one of the hurdles women faced during this movement, access to education (theme). She argues her point by comparing works of women writers of this era to one of the greatest writers of fiction, William Shakespeare. She states the shortcomings that passed and present women writers have faced through this sexist …show more content…
Throughout her argument she begins to stress the fact that those that are considered work class individuals can not produce quality fiction. The resources to money is key for one to be able to write fiction, especially as a women and Woolf provides many literary aides to reinforce the fact that women can not advance in the literature without money. “For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among uneducated, servile people…it is not born today among the working classes” (Woolf, 48) Woolf’s stance on this issue extends far more than women and art. She articulates the defaced stance women has in society, and how social class has a bond to whether or not women can create the art of fiction and not just men creating fiction with women being the primary