The Global Journal of Literary Studies I December 2016 I ... · The Global Journal of Literary Studies I December 2016 ... right like Mary Wollstonecraft’s ... The Global Journal

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I December 2016 I Volume II, Issue IV ISSN : 2395 4817


The Global Journal of Literary Studies I December 2016 I Vol. II, Issue IV I ISSN : 2395 4817

A Room of One’s Own : Recalling Virginia Woolf and Her Feminist Texts

Dr. Jairam Jha

Associate Professor

Silapatthar college Assam, INDIA.

Rohini Jha

Research scholar V. K. S. University

Bihar, INDIA.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine V. Woolf’s oeuvre by approaching her techniques in her fictions and

nonfictions. And how V. Woolf and other feminists have similar approach towards feminism but Woolf’s opinion

surpassed almost many feminists in her groundbreaking ‘A Room of One’s Own’ published in 1929 with its

stunning content favouring female’s right. Woolf had differently dealt and out rightly rejects the so called

patriarchal cage and called for women’s freedom. She may be called as a stout feminist whose writing had a

purpose to elevate women’s position first in a family then in society and in the world. This paper is thus focused

to explore the contexts of how Virginia Woolf had brought a drastic change in the literary scenario and that too

in a time when males were very prominent and dominant in literary field. Research methodology has been done

by reading the context of Woolf’s different texts and for some purposes writers’ blog and Wikipedia have also

been consulted.

Keywords : Virginia Woolf, social constructs, females, voice


INTRODUCTION

V Woolf( 20th

century feminist critics) can be seen as having touched so many aspects be it feminism,

criticism, speaking about women’s right, employing stream of consciousness technique in her fictions;

it may be undoubtedly said that Woolf was a master of artistic plays. Virginia Woolf is known as one of

the foremost modernist writers of the English-speaking world. She was one of the most famous essayist,

publisher, critic of modern time. Born Adeline Virginia Stephen . She was born on 25 January 1882 in

Kensington, Middlesex, England. She can be rightly called as pioneer of feminist literary criticism. Her

father was Leslie Stephen who was a Victorian agnostic philosopher. After her parents’ death, she

settled, with her brothers and sisters, in Bloomsbury, a fashionable area of London . Virginia Woolf was

member of ‘Bloomsbury Group’ along with her sister Vanessa. Others include John Maynard Keyenes,

Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, and the writer Leonard Woolf, whom Virginia Woolf married in 1912. In

woolf’s fiction the readers are drawn towards her technique and enjoy the game of thought flow (

stream of consciousness technique). In the stream of consciousness technique V.Woolf seems to be

involving readers mind into the game of present past and instantly in future. The power of mind is

totally infused with the work and in a flash everything comes to normal. This experience can only be felt

when we read ‘To The Light House’ by Virginia Woolf and its section especially ‘Time Passes’.

Stream of consciousness technique was first developed by William James in The principles of

psychology (1890) when he said that:

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits.....it is not joined;

it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ is the metaphor by which it is most naturally described.

In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or

subjective life. ( James William) Woolf had authored so many novels. Her first novel

was pub in 1915 ‘ The Voyage Out’ which gives Woolf an idea to satire Edwardian

life. The story is about a girl named Rachel Vinrace who boarded on her father’s ship

and while on her journey she meets with different other co passengers. There occurs a

series of talks and in the midst of conversation she is able to gain the insight of the fact

about the complexity of human relation. At the end of the novel Rachel dies as a result

of illness. But through this novel V.Woolf explores the ways that how people around

them encounter the world. Woolf’s ‘Night and Day’ published in 1919 examines the

relationship between love, marriage, happiness and success. It is among the early

novels that Woolf deals with the issues concerning women’s suffrage (women’s

suffrage is the right of women to vote and to stand for electoral office).

Some of her most famous novels are Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the light House(1927), Orlando(1928)

were written in a stream of consciousness technique. All these texts have caught the readers attention till

the end of the novel.

Woolf’s writing of fiction is an amalgamation of her real thoughts put into the crucible of imagination

that comes to light in the form of fiction. And her nonfiction especially ‘ A room of one’s own (1929)

with the groundbreaking message about women’s right socially, politically and individually is beyond

any discussion. A room of one’s own is not just a piece of writing but it would not be wrong to say that


it is a voice raised for female which has stirred the inner conscience of many. In A room of one’s own

Woolf states:

‘‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’’.

Woolf asserts that women can write only when they are provided with money and a room of her own.

She avers that the capabilities of women can never be measured and they fail because they are not been

provided with the basic amenities. Woolf rightly announces the power of common as well as literate

women who is to write fiction. How powers of common women remains confined and limited under

the patriarchal society can best be analysed in this regard. A woman ( as girl) lives with their parents

in her father’s house after marriage she lives in her husband’s house and in old age may be in her son’s

house. This generalized life routine of any common women could be seen around the globe. But the

point is that, women never cared to own a house due to various reasons. And this causes them to lag

behind in many fields where only men are considered superior and masters.

In "Modern Fiction", Woolf elucidates upon what she understands modern fiction to be. Woolf states

that a writer should write what inspires them and not follow any special method. She believed writers

are constrained by the publishing business, by what society believes literature should look like and what

society has dictated how literature should be written. Woolf believes it is a writer's job to write the

complexities in life, the unknowns, not the unimportant things.

Woolf wanted writers to express themselves in such a way that it showed life as it should be seen not as

"a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged". She set out to inspire writers of modern fiction by

calling for originality, criticizing those who focused on the unimportant things, and comparing the

differences of cultural authors, all for the sake of fiction and literature.

What is feminism? This may be question for some and this may be answer for some because enough ink

has been spilled over finding the exact conclusion to what feminism stands for any female. Different

places have different reasons for the birth of feminism. Some writers do admit that they are feminist

while some don’t admit being called as feminist although their works directly or indirectly contributes to

the welfare of common females. Today’s era can be frankly called as postmodern era but simultaneously

feminist age too. This feminist age has come over by winning a long battle with the male chauvinists for

the sake of females. Woolf’s contribution to the English literary world are immense. She had acquired a

strong position in the literary world of Britain, among the feminists, as an active member of Bloomsbury

Group and in the stream of consciousness genre. Although, earlier many feminist critics and writers

have written and said so much in favour of female’s right like Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of

the rights of women(1792), Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth century (1845), J.S Mill’s the

subjection of women(1869).

Gayatri Spivak prefers the term ‘subaltern’ as it encompasses the exact picture of the lower class

people. Morton quotes the words of Spivak as: I like the word subaltern for one reason. It is totally

situational. Subaltern began as a description of a certain rank in the military. The word was under

censorship by Gramsci: he called Marxism ‘monism’, and was obliged to call the proletarian ‘subaltern’

That word, used under duress, has been transformed into the description of everything that doesn’t fall

under strict class analysis. I like that, because it has no theoretical rigor (46). It is very important to take


a look at what other feminist writers have to say about females and their gradual rise. Showalter

undertakes such a project in her well known book A Literature of their Own: British Women Novelists

from Bronte to Lessing and identifies three prominent phases in the evolution of English women’s

writing. She describes them as feminine, feminist and female phases in women’s literature (Showalter,

Towards a Feminist Poetics 153). Susie Tharu and K. Lalita, the editors of Women Writing in India: 600

B.C. to the Present, have done a tremendous job in gathering the works of the women writers with a

special emphasis on their lives and limitations. The pathetic plight of a widow is recalled as:

Once the husband dies, the torture of his wife begins, as if the messengers of the death

god Yama themselves have come to take away her soul. None of her relatives will

touch her to take her ornaments off her body. That task is assigned to three women

from the barber caste. Their number varies from three to six. No sooner does the

husband breathe his last than those female fiends literally jump all over her and

violently tear all the ornaments from her nose, ears, etc. In that rush, the delicate bones

of the nose and ears are sometimes broken. Sometimes while plucking the ornaments

from her hair, tufts of hair are also plucked off. If she is wearing any gold or silver

ornaments, these cruel women never have the patience to take them off one by one:

they pin her hands down on the ground and try to break the bangles with a large stone.

Why, these callous women torture even a six – or seven – year –old girl, who doesn’t

even know what a husband means when she becomes a widow! (Tharu 359).

The sad plight of woman’s subjugation shown by Tharu and Lalita is very much true in Indian context.

This torture is again another example of female’s becoming sufferer in a male centred society. Even

after the death of a male(husband) wife is punished cruelly. She is punished for the crime she has never

committed.

CONCLUSION

V. Woolf was a true voice for females and their problems. Woolf had listened to the problems of

females but she didn’t left them to suffer instead she had contributed not only to the literary world but to

the women’s world also. After committing suicide by hanging stones to her and drowning into river she

said goodbye to the world but what she left behind was her legacy which is carried on by today’s

feminists. After Woolf the rise of female writers in the literary world was like a powerful storm. Female

writers were at ease in their expression. Woolf’s suicide has remained a puzzle till date. She had a

nervous breakdown and she committed suicide on 28 March 1941 at the age of 59 by drowning herself

in River Ouse,near Lewes, Sussex, England. She left a letter to her husband Leonard Woolf. She wrote

in her suicide note:

‘‘You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could

have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I

am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I

can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the

happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly

good’’.


Thanks to such an eye opening and thought provoking words favouring female that Virginia Woolf

became immortal in the literary world. Her writings have been very influential because all her

techniques have been well employed in the content of her fictions and nonfictions. Although Woolf’s

life had been problematic due to psychotic disorder but her contents in nonfictions were very stunning

and realistic. She wrote every word of her nonfictions be it modern fiction , A Room of One’s Own,

Three Guineas, in a very frank but gentle tone in women’s favour. For other literary females/ feminists

it was not possible to trim any single content from her nonfictions because all the texts states about

women empowerment which seems to be suppressed by the male chauvinist society. Her words in

nonfiction played a great role in weakening of the influence exerted by male dominated traditional

society. It can be said that with the writings of Virginia Woolf, females’ growth and females’ experience

could become possible. Literature by women for women was very much appreciated throughout the

world and encouragement was given to women for their clarifications on gender inequality or women’s

movement. No doubt, before the publication of V. Woolf’s declarative words in A Room Of One’s

Own, we have had many feminist writers who raised her voice against the marginalized roles of women.

These feminists writers like Christine De Pisan, Aphra Behn in England, Mary Wollstonecraft etc. have

already revolted against the male chauvinists of their time through literature.

References

James, William.( 1950).The principles of psychology,vols 1-2.New York:Dover Publications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Room_of_One%27s_Own#cite_ref-4

Woolf, Virginia.( 2006). ‘Modern Fiction’.The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Twentieth

Century and Beyond.Ed. Joseph Black.227.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Fiction_(essay)#cite_ref-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf

Morton, Stephen.(2003). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London: Routledge, .p. 46.

Showalter, Elaine.(2001). Towards A Feminist Poetics.Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. Ed. Philip Rice and

Patricia Waugh. London: Arnold. 146-155.

Tharu, Susie, and K. Lalita,( 1991).eds. Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present Delhi: Oxford U P.

Vol.1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf#cite_ref-27

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The Global Journal of Literary Studies I December 2016 I ... · The Global Journal of Literary Studies I December 2016 ... right like Mary Wollstonecraft’s ... The Global Journal