Virginia Woolf and A Room of One's Own: Writing From the Female Perspective Anonymous

Virginia Woolf's ambitious work A Room of One's Own tackles many significant issues concerning the history and culture of women's writing, and attempts to document the conditions which women have had to endure in order to write, juxtaposing these with her vision of ideal conditions for the creation of literature. Woolf's extended essay has endured and proved itself to be a viable, pioneering feminist piece of work, but the broad range of ideas and arguments Woolf explores leaves her piece open to criticism over certain concepts which seem to contradict themselves. This observation can be explained most satisfactorily by critic Ellen Bayuk Rosenman, who posits, "the essay does not strive for the strict coherence of a jigsaw puzzle, composed of perfectly interlocking pieces in which no gaps exist and there is nothing left over...Woolf's essay has proved so durable because it often contradicts itself"(13). Woolf puts forth the notion in the end of her essay that the "androgynous mind" is to be the apotheosis of all the perspectives of writing; yet this belief she conveys contradicts not only previous evidence she has expressed but also diminishes the value of the female as a significant...