A Room of One’s Own

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what

has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain. When

you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of

a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply

a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a

tribute to the Brontë and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some

witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to

George Eliot; a reference to Mrs. Gaskell and one would have done. But

at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and

fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what

they are like; or it might mean women and the fiction that they write;

or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them; or it

might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and

you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider

the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon

saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a

conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the

first duty of a lecturer—to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget

the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion

upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if

she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great

problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction

unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these

two questions—women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned,

unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do

what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and

the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as

I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay

bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will

find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At

any rate, when a subject is highly controversial—and any question about

sex is that—one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how

one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s

audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the

limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction

here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose,

making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you

the story of the two days that preceded my coming here—how, bowed down

by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I

pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not

say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an

invention; so is Fernham; “I” is only a convenient term for somebody who

has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be

some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and

to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of

course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all

about it.

Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by

The scene, if I may ask you to follow me, was now changed. The leaves

were still falling, but in London now, not Oxbridge; and I must ask you

to imagine a room, like many thousands, with a window looking across

people’s hats and vans and motorcars to other windows, and on the table

inside the room a blank sheet of paper on which was written in large

letters Women and Fiction, but no more. The inevitable sequel to

lunching and dining at Oxbridge seemed, unfortunately, to be a visit to

the British Museum. One must strain off what was personal and accidental

in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil

of truth. For that visit to Oxbridge and the luncheon and the dinner had

started a swarm of questions. Why did men drink wine and women water?

Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? What effect has

poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of

works of art?—a thousand questions at once suggested themselves. But

one needed answers, not questions; and an answer was only to be had by

consulting the learned and the unprejudiced, who have removed themselves

above the strife of tongue and the confusion of body and issued the

result of their reasoning and research in books which are to be found in

the British Museum. If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the

pencil, is truth?

Thus provided, thus confident and enquiring, I set out in the pursuit of

truth. The day, though not actually wet, was dismal, and the streets in

the neighbourhood of the Museum were full of open coal-holes, down which

sacks were showering; four-wheeled cabs were drawing up and depositing

on the pavement corded boxes containing, presumably, the entire wardrobe

of some Swiss or Italian family seeking fortune or refuge or some other

desirable commodity which is to be found in the boarding-houses of

Bloomsbury in the winter. The usual hoarse-voiced men paraded the

streets with plants on barrows. Some shouted; others sang. London was

like a workshop. London was like a machine. We were all being shot

backwards and forwards on this plain foundation to make some pattern.

The British Museum was another department of the factory. The

swing-doors swung open; and there one stood under the vast dome, as if

one were a thought in the huge bald forehead which is so splendidly

encircled by a band of famous names. One went to the counter; one took a

slip of paper; one opened a volume of the catalogue, and..... the five

dots here indicate five separate minutes of stupefaction, wonder and

bewilderment. Have you any notion how many books are written about women

in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by

men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in

spend a morning reading, supposing that at the end of the morning I

be a herd of elephants, I thought, and a wilderness of spiders,

desperately referring to the animals that are reputed longest lived and

most multitudinously eyed, to cope with all this. I should need claws of

steel and beak of brass even to penetrate the husk. How shall I ever

find the grains of truth embedded in all this mass of paper? I asked

myself, and in despair began running my eye up and down the long list of

titles. Even the names of the books gave me food for thought. Sex and

its nature might well attract doctors and biologists; but what was

surprising and difficult of explanation was the fact that sex—woman,

that is to say—also attracts agreeable essayists, light-fingered

novelists, young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken

no degree; men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not