A Room of One's Own Themes
Women and Femininity
Pick a random page of A Room of One's Own and you're nearly guaranteed to find some reference to women. This isn't exactly surprising, since Woolf's essay is a long, hard look at how to be a woman...
Literature and Writing
For one million dollars: what do geniuses need to write great books? (You've used up all your lifelines.) Oh, okay, need a hint? Well, how come Shakespeare was able to be so awesome? Instead of ask...
Wealth (and Poverty)
We can't say whether Woolf would have liked the Wu-Tang Clan, but she'd certainly agree that "Cash Rules Everything Around Me (C.R.E.A.M.!)." In A Room Of One's Own, the best tool for creating wome...
Freedom and Confinement
Isn't it ironic: in A Room of One's Own, Woolf tells us a woman needs a room of her own, with a lock on the door, in order to have the freedom to write (6.10). That is, she needs the freedom to con...
Contrasting Regions: Oxbridge and Fernham
What did you have for breakfast this morning? Last night's pizza and a flat coke? A tasty bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar? For Woolf, these are really important questions. "One cannot think well,...
Power
James Brown said it best: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World. Why? Because men have all the power. Or do they? You could argue that A Room of One's Own is all about power: men's power over women, wome...
Warfare
We hear you: A Room of One's Own isn't about war at all, right? It's about women sitting around and writing in private rooms. And you'd be right: war is not the main subject of Woolf's work. But sh...
Visions of London
There's just something about writers and cities. In a book in which so little happens, the setting in which things do happen is important. Aside from her visit to Oxbridge and Fernham, Mary Beton n...