In 1928 Virginia Woolf was invited to speak at a women’s college on the topic of “women and fiction” which gave rise to her collection of essays A Room of One’s Own. My copy is old, falling apart, not a spare margin to put even one new note. I found it in the back of a used book store for a dollar, and I thought, what luck. May all our books be so loved.
And, as it happens, it’s one of my favorite texts to teach. That’s been known to raise an eyebrow or two, but I love that Woolf takes what is expected of her and twists it to be her own, standing in defiance of what the system expects of her. They want her to sit quietly and do what is expected of her -- color within the lines and stick to the gravel path.
The turf, after all, is only for scholars.
From her very first words, Woolf nullifies institutional power: “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?” Speaking in front of a women’s college, Woolf is keenly aware of the expectations her audience has -- which is a result of their education -- and encourages them to resist craving what she calls a nugget of truth to be kept and hoarded. Their education until now has taught them to value only the truths handed to them -- not to find truth of their own. It is then a lesson within a lesson. The result is a small revolution: in refusing to see the topic of women and fiction in reductive or simplistic terms, Woolf offers to help her audience navigate a dense and deeply entrenched narrative. The alternative, then, is to treat it as the deeply complex and intricate subject they are -- women and fiction.
I see something of myself in this attitude. I, too, resist pre-packaged answers. I, too, try to give my students the lessons they want and the lessons they need. I try to leave loose ends for my students to tidy up themselves, and leave enough space in the conversation for them and what they bring into it (by virtue of refusing a pre-packaged answer Woolf leaves space for the audience to bring their own truths into the narrative, or what Toni Morrison would call becoming a co-author).
When my students leave my room at the end of the year I like to imagine that instead of a nugget to take with them that they have a large storage container. A bit of this here, a bit of that there, unable to fully discern the single moment they came upon the things they have learned -- that is what I hope for. May not a single thing they learned be a direct quote from my lessons. May they become the authors of their memories and of their learning.
Woolf is often dismissed out of hand as an elitist. They’re not wrong -- but I would like to make the case for A Room of One’s Own. There is an understanding of the employment-based challenges that are still felt today.
As she tells it, there is a social hierarchy of jobs. Fair enough, we must grant her that. We still see this today. A teacher and a doctor are not held in the same esteem, as is evidenced by the way these professions are treated both over time and presently.
It’s clear which jobs are valued -- and which are not. We tell our children to study for jobs that are respected. We tell them to follow their hearts -- but only to a point. We silently hope their hearts would like to be heart surgeons.
In Woolf’s time women made up the majority of those who held jobs that were severely underpaid, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Today we can understand this through the lens of minimum wage jobs which are disproportionately held by the poor and the very young (which is to say, things have changed -- but not much). Woolf argues that until women are paid fair wages for their work (until we all make a living wage regardless of our work) -- until society learns to value the work women do (until we value the work done by all members of society) -- then they are better off with an inheritance than the legal right to vote. Let’s unpack that.
Here her argument reminds me somewhat of a minor point made in Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. In it, Arnold makes a case for the inclusion of all social classes in the creation of culture (true culture, he said, was only possible with the help of everyone -- and if you didn’t have culture, then you had anarchy). As he saw it this was inclusive of, but not limited to, the participation of all social classes in the creation of politics and process of voting. Arnold knew what Woolf knew -- that without the appropriate education and without the ability to make a living wage, they were not capable of casting a meaningful vote.
I’m reminded of one of the reasons women were initially not given the vote. It was believed that they would simply vote the leaning of their husband. It was believed that women didn’t have their own political opinions. It was believed that women were mentally inferior to men, and as a result required the protection of their husbands in all things.
I can hear Woolf chuckling now. I believe it’s in chapter 4 of A Room of One’s Own where she says that she cannot say if women are inferior to men or not -- because they’ve not been educated or tested in the same way as men. Which is to say, they didn’t know if women could vote or not, because they had not been afforded the same opportunities as their wealthy male counterparts.
Sorry -- I get distracted easily. Let me regroup.
Woolf spends much of A Room of One’s Own advocating for the equality of education between the sexes as a vehicle for achieving social equality across genders. Both Woolf and Arnold felt that only when people didn’t have to worry about survival (ie: working themselves to death trying to put bread on their table and a roof over their heads) would they then be able to engage in participating in the mentally taxing exercise of national and international politics.
They do not argue, however, that an education will bring its recipients a better life whether it be spiritually or monetarily -- which is of course the fairy tale we feed our students today. The purpose of education as they understood it was to create a nation of citizens that understood the weight of their vote, and could appropriately cast it. Now, of course, everyone is entitled to a free education -- but it hasn’t changed with our culture or the demands of our age.
Just as Mary Beaton and Mary Seton eat their substandard lunch and watch the men’s sumptuous lunches pass by them, the economic divide in education is still just as flagrant.
What Woolf and Arnold argue for instead is the creation of an active citizenship. If they are educated then they can participate in the creation of state as well as the creation of culture. If they are educated then the vote -- and therefore politics -- can approach something like a system in which all voices are heard, and therefore a system that serves all of its people.
Mary Seton boldly says that she would rather have her inheritance than the vote. Her inheritance allows for her to educate herself, and it also allows for her to worry about intellectual pursuits rather than wondering where her next paycheck will materialize from. Or being dependent on a man. If the jobs for women were paid better -- until we learn to value every worker and every position held as a necessary piece of the social circle of life -- our nations will continue to be culturally impoverished. Woolf and Arnold both understood that no nation can claim greatness while its culture and politics do not work in the service of all its people -- or so long as they are primarily run on a system in which the highest classes create and merely hand it (culture and/or politics) to the lower classes.
Elitist though she may be, blind she was not. My students need to hear these messages. So I continue to teach it.
Woolf believed that 100 years was enough time for women and men to achieve true equality. I suppose in 2028 we will see if she was right. Who knows what Woolf would have made of our very modern world, and who knows how she might have seen her place in this world.
One of my students asked me once how much longer I was going to teach A Room of One’s Own. I thought about it for a moment -- no one had ever asked me that before. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to say immediately. I said I would continue to teach it and left the rest ambiguous.
That afternoon when I was driving home from school I turned it over in my mind. How much longer was I going to teach this text for?
Then it hit me, all at once.
I will teach A Room of One’s Own until it is no longer relevant. Until we no longer need its teachings, and its lessons within lessons. Until Judith Shakespeare has her fair shake. Until the four Marys need not stand in passive, powerless witness. Until we can all earn a living wage and participate meaningfully in the continued care for and building of our nations. Though I will teach it and enjoy it, it is my greatest hope that my daughter’s generation need never need to read it. And if they must read it, may they never need to teach it.
Until then, Woolf and I will continue to illuminate dark rooms not yet seen, together. In turf shoes.
Pretend it's in the lesson plan,
Dr. O
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