HW 21: Dear Sister

A Room of One’s Own written by Virginia Wolfe is definitely a difficult read. I also had trouble understanding the first chapter and what the author was trying to get across to the reader. In the first chapter the character, Mary is in distraught over the importance of women and fiction. She goes on to describe what she thinks this means she states, “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 they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them.” (Wolfe 3) This goes to show that Mary is contemplating what these two words mean and she goes on to show us that they can be interpreted in many different forms. When trying to describe “women” Mary compares the works of different poets, men and women poets. In this first chapter it is important to understand that women are not as powerful as men but they too still need a “room of their own” to express their ideas and perhaps write about them. Mary goes on and describes a river that she is walking by and a college, she reflects upon the images that she sees and ties that back into the question of women and fiction. I believe that your teacher felt that is an important book to read because it goes deeper into gender issues, you must remember that during this time period women were not as powerful and did not have as many rights as they do today. It is important to remember that women were not always considered equal, and this chapter goes into detail about how important it really is. My own personal reaction to this reading was that it was definitely hard to understand and interpret, perhaps because it is a new type of reading and the answers are not as clear. I think to fully understand what Virginia Wolfe is trying to understand I will have to look deeper into her work.