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A Room Of One's Own Research Paper

992 Words4 Pages

Virginia Woolf’s novel A Room of One’s Own is a highly renowned piece of literature that discusses many of the ideas that Woolf thinks about through the form of a lecture. The novel highlights many of the primary issues that were apparent during the early 20th century.This allows the reader to see what the conditions were like at the time. One of the main issues that does come to mind is women’s rights. This comes across as one of the most important themes throughout the novel. However, due to the time period that the book was released in, it wasn’t viewed as a major issue. The people that attended her lectures might have seen it as an issue, but there was little that they could do. However, today feminism is much more important. This would …show more content…

A lot of these changes would be the product of different thinking in a different time period. This clearly shows how much literature is affected by the society during the time period it was created in.
A Room of One’s Own was written during the early 20th century. Virginia Woolf, the author of the book, advocated for many things. However, one of the main things that she emphasized was the lack of women’s rights during the time. She approached this idea through many different avenues. One of the main ideas that she discussed was that women didn’t have power because they didn’t have money. This can be seen in the quote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” (Woolf 4) They weren’t given the same opportunities that males were so they didn’t have any chances to make money. This forced them to remain in their position on the social ladder with little room for mobility. Another one of the main ideas that Woolf discussed is that women weren’t educated. “She, like so many daughters of men prominent in the nineteenth century, was to be denied access to a university education.” (Woolf xlii) The lack of an education for women was primarily because their assumed position was in the house. Their ‘job’ was to take care of …show more content…

Feminism is an idea that has evolved over time. In contrast to the previous time period, women’s rights have drastically increased. This would have a severe effect on the novel itself. While many of the comments regarding women’s rights in Woolf’s novel were somewhat conservative, had the novel been released today, it would be very different. Because of the rise and increased prominence of feminism in the 21st century, if Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own today it would have been a lot more direct. She wouldn’t have to be afraid of speaking her mind. This would encourage her to include more direct suggestions about what can be done regarding women’s rights. This would cause the text to have many calls to action. Her direct approach would cause more people to understand the situation and it would draw attention to the issue. In addition to this, quotes like, “The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself,” would be the subject of a lot more analysis if it was left in the text. This is because women today would want to explore this idea. They wouldn’t just accept the statement as fact, they would want to state their opposition to it in addition to sharing ideas about why this way of thinking is outdated. Because of these ideas, had Woolf released A Room of One’s Own today

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