Don’t be Afraid of the Woolf
Tuesday, 8. September 2009, 22:16:44
I’ve just been reading a book, A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf. I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m going to talk about it anyway. Bear with me, gentle reader, as I explain how I came to read this short but long-winded tome with its circumlocutory airs.
It all started just under two weeks ago. I have a great love of classic literature, by which I mean my bookshelves are adorned with many ancient and dusty books whose origins I don’t recall, written by worthy authors I have never read. But as they say, every journey begins with a single coach trip, and it is on one of these long journeys that I read A Room of One's Own. To put it succinctly, I needed reading material for a four hour journey, and it needed to be a slim, light book. Casting my eye over my bookshelves, it alighted upon this slender (~100 pages) paperback by Virginia Woolf. I had often seen it there, but never before felt the urge to pick it up.
By now you are probably thinking, “this preamble is all very well kind sir, but what is it about?” Well don’t be so snappy. Indeed, as I drifted into this book and the hours passed, I was thinking exactly the same thing. Ms. Woolf starts by telling us she has been asked to give a talk at Newnham College on Women and Fiction, and being pathologically unable to make any statement on a subject in less than 100,000 words she embarks on an odyssey whose starting premise is that a woman cannot be an author of fiction unless she has a private income and some privacy (to wit, a room of her own). She then sets about proving this thesis. Ninety pages later, I was (with increasing testiness) asking her, as if she were present, “when are you going to get to the point?” For, over the hours, I had waded through paragraphs a full two pages long, and my eyelids were drooping, and the cause was not entirely due to my having to sit immobile in the same seat for several hours.
During the course of this 90 pages, Ms. Woolf had noted that most authors were men, and that the odds were stacked against women in many respects. (Note: this book was written in 1929. It is important to bear this in mind to understand her POV.) She had attempted to do various things whilst visiting Cambridge University, from visiting the library to walking on the grass, only to discover that as a mere woman she could not. By page 85 or so I was ready to give up on this longwinded monologue and beginning to wonder about the precise threat implied by the famous work "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" — was it perhaps death from boredom?
But at the eleventh hour (or more precisely, the fourth hour, as I approached my destination) Ms. Woolf suddenly decided to "shit or get off the pot" as Captain Kirk would say. Or was it Shakespeare? Never mind, in short she cut to the chase and started to make some interesting points.
Well I hate to pause here but I will cover the last 20 pages of the book in my next post. They are in fact quite enlightening and although I still think that Ms. Woolf writes exceedingly boring books, she does at least have some valuable insights for those who stay the course.
It all started just under two weeks ago. I have a great love of classic literature, by which I mean my bookshelves are adorned with many ancient and dusty books whose origins I don’t recall, written by worthy authors I have never read. But as they say, every journey begins with a single coach trip, and it is on one of these long journeys that I read A Room of One's Own. To put it succinctly, I needed reading material for a four hour journey, and it needed to be a slim, light book. Casting my eye over my bookshelves, it alighted upon this slender (~100 pages) paperback by Virginia Woolf. I had often seen it there, but never before felt the urge to pick it up.
By now you are probably thinking, “this preamble is all very well kind sir, but what is it about?” Well don’t be so snappy. Indeed, as I drifted into this book and the hours passed, I was thinking exactly the same thing. Ms. Woolf starts by telling us she has been asked to give a talk at Newnham College on Women and Fiction, and being pathologically unable to make any statement on a subject in less than 100,000 words she embarks on an odyssey whose starting premise is that a woman cannot be an author of fiction unless she has a private income and some privacy (to wit, a room of her own). She then sets about proving this thesis. Ninety pages later, I was (with increasing testiness) asking her, as if she were present, “when are you going to get to the point?” For, over the hours, I had waded through paragraphs a full two pages long, and my eyelids were drooping, and the cause was not entirely due to my having to sit immobile in the same seat for several hours.
During the course of this 90 pages, Ms. Woolf had noted that most authors were men, and that the odds were stacked against women in many respects. (Note: this book was written in 1929. It is important to bear this in mind to understand her POV.) She had attempted to do various things whilst visiting Cambridge University, from visiting the library to walking on the grass, only to discover that as a mere woman she could not. By page 85 or so I was ready to give up on this longwinded monologue and beginning to wonder about the precise threat implied by the famous work "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" — was it perhaps death from boredom?
But at the eleventh hour (or more precisely, the fourth hour, as I approached my destination) Ms. Woolf suddenly decided to "shit or get off the pot" as Captain Kirk would say. Or was it Shakespeare? Never mind, in short she cut to the chase and started to make some interesting points.
Well I hate to pause here but I will cover the last 20 pages of the book in my next post. They are in fact quite enlightening and although I still think that Ms. Woolf writes exceedingly boring books, she does at least have some valuable insights for those who stay the course.
WIDGETIZE