Quote 7
Sex and its nature might well attract doctors and biologists, but what was surprising and difficult of explanation was the fact that sex—woman, that is to say—also attracts agreeable essayists, light-fingered novelists, young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken no degree; men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women. (2.2)
Everyone's a critic, right? But Woolf raises a good point: how come women aren't qualified to write about women, if men seem to think they have every right to talk about them?
Quote 8
For that visit to Oxbridge and the luncheon and the dinner had started a swarm of questions. Why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? What effect has poverty on fiction? (2.1)
Okay, first, Woolf is continuing her pattern of insisting on the very material basis of art. But we feel like we should point out that not every man is rich. Does Woolf consider that?
Quote 9
No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house, and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labor cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. (2.14)
Mary's inheritance does way more than just make it so she doesn't have to work. She can think in a completely new way, too. So much for living for your art.