A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf is more like a long argumentative essay that lasts hundreds of pages. The book was inspired by several lectures that she herself presented at two elite colleges at Cambridge in October 1928: Girton College and Newnham College. It was first published on October 24, 1929.

While A Room of One's Own uses a fictitious narrator and storyline to investigate women as "authors" and "protagonists" in fiction, it actually still belongs to the nonfiction category. In a literary culture characterized by patriarchy, this essay book is considered feminist literature due to its demand for a literal and figurative place for women authors.

Curiously, the author herself was never fond of the label "feminist", and yet in this short work, she speaks passionately and eloquently on the exclusion of women from independence, wealth, and education. Her thesis that the secret to female creative liberation is a room - in addition to independence - is as true now as it was then. In a society dominated by males, Woolf established her presence and inventiveness, opening the path for many others to continue on the path she had set.

Author: Virginia Woolf

Year of Release: 1929

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