A ROOM OF ONE

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is a brilliant woman author in the English literary field during the 19th and 20th century. She is the pioneer among feminism critics. Her representative work A Room of One’s Own is widely considered “the first modern text of fem inist criticism.” It is the first to expose and criticize patriarchy culture. She criticizes the inhibition of females from patriarchy culture and affirms the female literature tradition rejected by patriarchy society, finding a historical supporting point for female writing. She puts forward the idea that females should try to write from the dual - sex point of view without neglecting their own sex features, thus providing us greater value than those feminist critics excluding male writers. Then in my paper, I will try to analyze this work from the following aspects: instruction of A Room of One’s Own, feministic thoughts in A Room of One’s Own and the influence of her feministic thoughts in the literary field.First and foremost, A Room of One’s Own is basedon a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in 1928. It is the inspirational source for the fundamental queries of a female literary tradition and is also much appreciated in the present post-modernist or post-feminist time. In this book there are six chapters, in each section Virginia Woolf discusses the different aspects of the topic: women and fiction. In chapter one Virginia Woolf points out that western history so far has been the history of the patriarchy, a history written by men about men and for men. As daughters, wife, or mother, women have no equal rights and no economic independence. In chapter two, the topic is men’s anger. The narrator of the book, goes to the British Museum to find out a series of questions, such as“whydid men drink wine and women water?”and the aunt,“Mary Baton”leaves the narrator a legacy of 500 pounds a year, and this legacy has its special hints. In chapter three, the narrator decides to investigate women in Elizabethan England, puzzled why there were no women writers in that fertile literary period. She believes there is a deep connection between living conditions and writing.In chapter four, the narrator makes up a story of Judith Shakespeare, supposedly the sister to the great Elizabethan playwright. Judith is full of adventurous spirit and rich imagination, but she is not sent to school, as her brother is, to learn grammar and logic. Finally her brother goes to London and becomes a great dramatist, while she dies and is buried at crossing roads. Actually the story is a miniature of the pathetic life of women, especially women of talent and ambition in the old days. In chapter five, the narrator thinks that the female writers, now given a better education, no longer need novels as a means of self-expression. She shows the readers an enormous change in the state of writing: an average female writer is finally able to write without anger or hatred, without a stifling awareness of her gender, with a standard “feminine”sentence as a model. In chapter six, the narrator opens with a story of a man and woman meeting on the street and she puts forward a term: androgynous mind.Also, A Room of One’s Own is a classic work about feministic thoughts. From this book, we can get to know the three major thoughts of Virginia Woolf: having a roomof one’s own, having their own way of writing, having their own voice and androgyny. Firstly, Woolf thinks that in the society of patriarchy during the Victorian period, women have been confined to the very limited sphere of domestic life, to be trained after the traditional model of femininity, and to bury themselves in the endless trivial housework, with no money, no rest, no private space, and no chance for self-realization. For example, Jane Austen did not have a study of her own, so she often finished her writings secretly in a corner of the living room. Every time when someone walked into the living room, she would hide her manuscripts immediately as literary writing was not an honorable career for women. Thus, Woolf makes the most famous statement: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” and “ that it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry.” Besides, the room itself means not only a space; it is a metaphorical reference to a state of complete independence and freedom, where a woman can return to her real self. She can feel, think, and act as she likes without considering her own positionand sex. Only in such a state of absolute independence and freedom can a woman create really great literature. Secondly, in A Room of One’s Own, Woolf employs the first narrator “I” to communicate with the audience the topic-women and fiction. However, “I” in this book does not refer to Virginia Woolf, but to Mary. “Mary” is not a specific individual, but refers to different types of women. Woolf fabricated a narrator, events, and places in order to discuss the creative talents of female writing and express her own points of view. In Woolf’s day, if a woman wanted to express her opinions, she would face a number of obstacles. Thus, a fictional narrator is put into use. Meanwhile, this is also a revolt to the patriarchy of the society where women had almost no opportunity to express their opinions. Thirdly, the definition of “Androgyny”is one of the important thoughts of feminism and feministic criticism. Woolf defines the androgynous nature of the perfect human mind as two opposite and sexed presiding powers working in harmony. She describes the relation in the following simple statements: “In the man’s brain the man predominates over the woman and in the woman’sbrain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating. If one is a man, still the woman part of his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her.”The core of Woolf’s androgynous aesthetic is sexual transcendence. While allowing sexual differences, she is opposed to the simplistic emphasis of sexual differences and exclusiveness, or single-sexedness, and is skeptical of all sexual branding. The real world, she believes, is far more sophisticated than the simplistic duality of man vs. woman, or male vs. female. In her own fiction, she undermines and subverts the conventional concept of sex, and makes sexual difference a question. As in Mrs. Dalloway, she portrays the complicated and uncertain nature of sexual identity. Also, in To the Lighthouse, she explores the difficulty as well as the possibility of the ideal of androgynous being. And Woolf also points out that if one wants to achieve the effects of。

a room of one's own课文《A Room of One's Own》是英国女作家弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙创作的一篇散文，首次发表于1929年。

这篇散文探讨了女性在文学创作中的地位和困境，强调了女性拥有自己的空间和时间对于创作的重要性。

以下是《A Room of One's Own》的部分内容：A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.But how many women,I wonder,have the same opportunity as I?How many women,for instance,have生来就有足够的钱来养活自己?How many have a private income?How many are not obliged to earn their living?How many live in a house with a garden?How many have even a corner to themselves in a shared room?And,finally,how many have the time?I am not complaining,I am merely wondering.I amwondering,for instance,how many women,starting with the same disadvantages as I,have managed to reach the same point as I.I am wondering how many have had the determination and the opportunity.The answer,I suppose,is that very few women have had either.And it is for this reason that I am going to write.I am going to write because I have a room of my own and I have enough money to support myself.I am not going to write about women because I am a woman,but because I have something to say about women.I have often been asked why I did not write a book about women.I have been asked this question so often that I have come to believe that it is the only question worth answering.But I have never been able to answer it.I have never been able to answer it because I have neverbeen able to think of a reason why I should write a book about women.I have never been able to think of a reason why I should write a book about any subject.I have never been interested in writing about myself or about other people.I have never been interested in writing about the past or the present.I have never been interested in writing about the world or about God.I have only been interested in writing about fiction. And I have only been interested in writing about fiction because I have been interested in reading fiction.I have been interested in reading fiction because I have been interested in life.And I have been interested in life because I have been alive.。

A Room of One’s Own V I R G I N I A W O O L FContextVirginia Woolf was born Virginia Stephen in 1882 into a prominent and intellectually well-connected family. Her formal education was limited, but she grew up reading voraciously from the vast library of her father, the critic Leslie Stephen. Her youth was a traumatic one, including the early deaths of her mother and brother, a history of sexual abuse, and the beginnings of a depressive mental illness that plagued her intermittently throughout her life and eventually led to her suicide in 1941. After her father's death in 1904, Virginia and her sister (the painter Vanessa Bell) set up residence in a neighborhood of London called Bloomsbury, where they fell into association with a circle of intellectuals that included such figures as Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and later E.M. Forster. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, with whom she ran a small but influential printing press. The highly experimental character of her novels, and their brilliant formal innovations, established Woolf as a major figure of British modernism. Her novels, which include To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Waves, are particularly concerned with the lives and experiences of women.In October 1928, Virginia Woolf was invited to deliver lectures at Newnham College and Girton College, which at that time were the only women's colleges at Cambridge. These talks, on the topic of Women and Fiction, were expanded and revised into A Room of One's Own, which was printed in 1929. The title has become a virtual cliché in our culture, a fact that testifies to the book's importance and its enduring influence. Perhaps the single most important work of feminist literary criticism, A Room of One's Own explores the historical and contextual contingencies of literary achievement.SummaryThe dramatic setting of A Room of One's Own is that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She advances the thesis that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the thinking that led her to adopt this thesis. She dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginary narrator ("call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance") who is in her same position, wrestling with the same topic.The narrator begins her investigation at Oxbridge College, where she reflects on the different educational experiences available to men and women as well as on more material differences in their lives. She then spends a day in the British Library perusing the scholarship on women, all of which has written by men and all of which has been written in anger. Turning to history, she finds so little data about the everyday lives of women that she decides to reconstruct their existence imaginatively. The figure of Judith Shakespeare is generated as an example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met with under those circumstances. In light of this background, she considers the achievements of the major women novelists of the nineteenth century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer. A survey of the current state of literature follows, conducted through a reading the first novel of one of the narrator's contemporaries. Woolf closes the essay with an exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition that has been so hardly bequeathed to them, and to increase the endowment for their own daughters.Character List"I" - The fictionalized author-surrogate ("call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance") whose process of reflection on the topic "women and fiction" forms the substance of the essay.The Narrator (In-Depth Analysis)The Beadle - An Oxbridge security official who reminds the narrator that only "Fellows and Scholars" are permitted on the grass; women must remain on the gravel path.Mary Seton - Student at Fernham College and friend of the narrator.Mary Beton - The narrator's aunt, whose legacy of five hundred pounds a year secures her niece's financial independence. (Mary Beton is also one of the names Woolf assigns to her narrator, whose identity, she says, is irrelevant.)Judith Shakespeare - The imagined sister of William Shakespeare, who suffers greatly and eventually commits suicide because she can find no socially acceptable outlets for her genius.Mary Carmichael - A fictitious novelist, contemporary with the narrator of Woolf's essay. In her first novel, she has "broken the sentence, broken the sequence" and forever changed the course of women's writing.Mr. A - An imagined male author, whose work is overshadowed by a looming self-consciousness and petulant self-assertiveness.Analysis of Major CharacterThe NarratorThe unnamed female narrator is the only major character in A Room of One’s Own. She refers to herself only as “I”; in chapter one of the text, she tells the reader to call her “Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or any other name you please . . . ” The narrator assumes each of these names at various points throughout the text. The constantly shifting nature of her identity complicates her narrative even more, since we must consider carefully who she is at any given moment. However, her shifting identity also gives her a more universal voice: by taking on different names and identities, the narrator emphasizes that her words apply to all women, not just herself.The dramatic setting for A Room of One’s Own is Woolf’s thought process in preparation for giving a lecture on the topic “women and fiction.” But the fictionalized narrator is distinct from the author Woolf. The narrator lends a storylike quality to the text, and she often blends fact and fiction to prove her points. Her liberty with factuality suggests that no irrefutable truth exists in the world—all truth is relative and subjective.The narrator is an erudite and engaging storyteller, and she uses the book to explore the multifaceted and rather complicatedhistory of literary achievement. Her provocative inquiries into the status quo of literature force readers to question the widely held assumption that women are inferior writers, compared to men, and this is why there is a dearth of memorable literary works by women. This literary journey is highlighted by numerous actual journeys, such as the journey around Oxbridge College and her tour of the British library. She interweaves her journeys with her own theories about the world—including the principle of “incandescence.” Woolf defines incandescence as the state in which everything is personal burns away and what is left is the “nugget of pure truth” in the art. This is the ideal state in which everything is consumed in the in tensity and truth of one’s art. The narrator skillfully leads the reader through one of the most important works of feminist literary history to d ate. Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThe Importance of MoneyFor the narrator of A Room of One’s Own, money is the primary element that prevents women from having a room of their own, and thus, having money is of the utmost importance. Because women do not have power, their creativity has been systematically stifled throughout the ages. The narrator writes, “Int ellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time . . .” She uses this quotation to explain why so few women have writ ten successful poetry. She believes that the writing of novels lends itself more easily to frequent starts and stops, so women are more likely to write novels than poetry: women must contend with frequent interruptions because they are so often deprived of a room of their own in which to write. Without money, the narrator implies, women will remain in second place to their creative male counterparts. The financial discrepancy between men and women at the time of Woolf’s writing perpetuated the myth that wom en were less successful writers.The Subjectivity of TruthIn A Room of One’s Own, the narrator argues that even history is subjective. What she seeks is nothing less than “the essenti al oil of truth,” but this eludes her, and she eventually concludes that no such thing exists. The narrator later writes, “When a subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.” To demonstrate the idea that opinion is the only thing that a person can actually “prove,” she fictionalizes her lecture, claiming, “Fiction is likely to contain more truth than fact.” Reality is not objective: rather, it is contingent up on the circumstances of one’s world. This argument complicates her narrativ e: Woolf forces her reader to question the veracity of everything she has presented as truth so far, and yet she also tells them that the fictional parts of any story contain more essential truth than the factual parts. With this observation she recasts the accepted truths and opinions of countless literary works.MotifsInterruptionsWhen the narrator is interrupted in A Room of One’s Own, she generally fails to regain her original concentration, suggesting that women without private spaces of their own, free of interruptions, are doomed to difficulty and even failure in their work. While the narrator is describing Oxbridge University in chapter one, her attention is drawn to a cat without a tail. The narrator finds this cat to be out of place, and she uses the sight of this cat to take her text in a different direction. The oddly jarring and incongruous sight of a cat without a tail—which causes the narrator to completely lose her train of thought—is an exercise in allowing the reader to experience what it might feel like to be a woman writer. Although the narrator goes on to make an interesting and valuable point about the atmosphere at her luncheon, she has lost her original point. This shift underscores her claim that women, who so often lack a room of their own and the time to write, cannot compete against the men who are not forced to struggle for such basic necessities.Gender InequalityThroughout A Room of One’s Own, the narrator emphasizes the fact that women are treated unequally in her society and that this is why they have produced less impressive works of writing than men. To illustrate her point, the narrator creates a woman named Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary twin sister of William Shakespeare. The narrator uses Judith to show how society systematically discriminates against women. Judith is just as talented as her brother William, but while his talents are recognized and encouraged by their family and the rest of their society, Judith’s are underestimated and explicitly deemphasi zed. Judith writes, but she is secretive and ashamed of it. She is engaged at a fairly young age; when she begs not to have to marry, her beloved father beats her. She eventually commits suicide. The narrator invents the tragic figure of Judith to prove that a woman as talented as Shakespeare could never have achieved such success. Talent is an essential component of Shakespeare’s success, but because women are treated so differently, a female Shakespeare would have fared quite differently even if she’d had as much talent as Shakespeare did.SymbolsA Room of One’s OwnThe central point of A Room of One’s Own is that every woman needs a room of her own—something men are able to enjoy without question. A room of her own would provide a woman with the time and the space to engage in uninterrupted writing time. During Woolf’s time, women rarely enjoyed these luxuries. They remained elusive to women, and, as a result, their art suffered. But Woolf is concerned with more than just the room itself. She uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues, such as privacy, leisure time, and financial independence, each of which is an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women. Woolf predicts that until these inequalities are rectified, women will remain second-class citizens and their literary achievements will also be branded as such.。

ARoomofOnesOwn英⽂介绍及赏析A Room of One’s Own V I R G I N I A W O O L FContextVirginia Woolf was born Virginia Stephen in 1882 into a prominent and intellectually well-connected family. Her formal education was limited, but she grew up reading voraciously from the vast library of her father, the critic Leslie Stephen. Her youth was a traumatic one, including the early deaths of her mother and brother, a history of sexual abuse, and the beginnings of a depressive mental illness that plagued her intermittently throughout her life and eventually led to her suicide in 1941. After her father's death in 1904, Virginia and her sister (the painter Vanessa Bell) set up residence in a neighborhood of London called Bloomsbury, where they fell into association with a circle of intellectuals that included such figures as Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and later E.M. Forster. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, with whom she ran a small but influential printing press. The highly experimental character of her novels, and their brilliant formal innovations, established Woolf as a major figure of British modernism. Her novels, which include To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Waves, are particularly concerned with the lives and experiences of women.In October 1928, Virginia Woolf was invited to deliver lectures at Newnham College and Girton College, which at that time were the only women's colleges at Cambridge. These talks, on the topic of Women and Fiction, were expanded and revised into A Room of One's Own, which was printed in 1929. The title has become a virtual cliché in our culture, a fact that testifies to the book's importance and its enduring influence. Perhaps the single most important work of feminist literary criticism, A Room of One's Own explores the historical and contextual contingencies of literary achievement.SummaryThe dramatic setting of A Room of One's Own is that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She advances the thesis that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the thinking that led her to adopt this thesis. She dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginary narrator ("call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance") who is in her same position, wrestling with the same topic.The narrator begins her investigation at Oxbridge College, where she reflects on the different educational experiences available to men and women as well as on more material differences in their lives. She then spends a day in the British Library perusing the scholarship on women, all of which has written by men and all of which has been written in anger. Turning to history, she finds so little data about the everyday lives of women that she decides to reconstruct their existence imaginatively. The figure of Judith Shakespeare is generated as an example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met with under those circumstances. In light of this background, she considers the achievements of the major women novelists of the nineteenth century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer. A survey of the current state of literature follows, conducted through a reading the first novel of one of the narrator's contemporaries. Woolf closes the essay with an exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition that has been so hardly bequeathed to them, and to increase the endowment for their own daughters.Character List"I" - The fictionalized author-surrogate ("call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance") whose process of reflection on the topic "women and fiction" forms the substance of the essay.The Narrator (In-Depth Analysis)The Beadle - An Oxbridge security official who reminds the narrator that only "Fellows and Scholars" are permitted on the grass; women must remain on the gravel path.Mary Seton - Student at Fernham College and friend of the narrator.Mary Beton - The narrator's aunt, whose legacy of five hundred pounds a year secures her niece's financial independence. (Mary Beton is also one of the names Woolf assigns to her narrator, whose identity, she says, is irrelevant.)Judith Shakespeare - The imagined sister of William Shakespeare, who suffers greatly and eventually commits suicide because she can find no socially acceptable outlets for her genius.Mary Carmichael - A fictitious novelist, contemporary with the narrator of Woolf's essay. In her first novel, she has "broken the sentence, broken the sequence" and forever changed the course of women's writing.Mr. A - An imagined male author, whose work is overshadowed by a looming self-consciousness and petulant self-assertiveness.Analysis of Major CharacterThe NarratorThe unnamed female narrator is the only major character in A Room of One’s Own. She refers to herself only as “I”; in chapter one of the text, she tells the reader to call her “Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or any other name you please . . . ”The narrator assumes each of these names at various points throughout the text. The constantly shifting nature of her identity complicates her narrative even more, since we must consider carefully who she is at any given moment. However, her shifting identity also gives her a more universal voice: by taking on different names and identities, the narrator emphasizes that her words apply to all women, not just herself.The dramatic setting for A Room of One’s Own is Woolf’s thought process in preparation for giving a lecture on the topic “women and fiction.” But the fictionalized narrator is distinct from the author Woolf. The narrator lends a storylike quality to the text, and she often blends fact and fiction to prove her points. Her liberty with factuality suggests that no irrefutable truth exists in the world—all truth is relative and subjective.The narrator is an erudite and engaging storyteller, and she uses the book to explore the multifaceted and rather complicated history of literary achievement. Her provocative inquiries into the status quo of literature force readers to question the widely held assumption that women are inferior writers, compared to men, and this is why there is a dearth of memorable literary works by women. This literary journey is highlighted by numerous actual journeys, such as the journey around Oxbridge College and her tour of the British library. She interweaves her journeys with her own theories about the world—including the principle of “incandescence.” Woolf defines incandescence as the state in which everything is personal burns away and what is left is the “nugget of pure truth” in the art. This is the ideal state in which everything is consumed in the in tensity and truth of one’s art. The narrator skillfully leads the reader through one of the most important works of feminist literary history to d ate. Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThe Importance of MoneyFor the narrator of A Room of One’s Own, money is the primary element that prevents women from having a room of their own, and thus, having money is of the utmost importance. Because women do not have power, their creativity has been systematically stifled throughout the ages. The narrator writes, “Int ellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time . . .” She uses this quotation to explain why so few women have writ ten successful poetry. She believes that the writing of novels lends itself more easily to frequent starts and stops, so women are more likely to write novels than poetry: women must contend with frequent interruptions because they are so often deprived of a room of their own in which to write. Without money, the narrator implies, women will remain in second place to their creative male counterparts. The financial discrepancy between men and women at the time of Woolf’s writing perpetuated the myth that wom en were less successful writers.The Subjectivity of TruthIn A Room of One’s Own, the narrator argues that even history is subjective. What she seeks is nothing less than “the essenti al oil of truth,” but this eludes her, and she eventually concludes that no such thing exists. The narrator later writes, “When a subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.” To demonstrate the idea that opinion is the only thing that a person can actually “prove,” she fictionalizes her lecture, claiming, “Fiction is likely to contain more truth than fact.” Reality is not objective: rather, it is contingent up on the circumstances of one’s world. This argument complicates her narrativ e: Woolf forces her reader to question the veracity of everything she has presented as truth so far, and yet she also tells them that the fictional parts of any story contain more essential truth than the factual parts. With this observation she recasts the accepted truths and opinions of countless literary works.MotifsInterruptionsWhen the narrator is interrupted in A Room of One’s Own, she generally fails to regain her original concentration, suggesting that women without private spaces of their own, free of interruptions, are doomed to difficulty and even failure in their work. While the narrator is describing Oxbridge University in chapter one, her attention is drawn to a cat without a tail. The narrator finds this cat to be out of place, and she uses the sight of this cat to take her text in a different direction. The oddly jarring andincongruous sight of a cat without a tail—which causes the narrator to completely lose her train of thought—is an exercise in allowing the reader to experience what it might feel like to be a woman writer. Although the narrator goes on to make an interesting and valuable point about the atmosphere at her luncheon, she has lost her original point. This shift underscores her claim that women, who so often lack a room of their own and the time to write, cannot compete against the men who are not forced to struggle for such basic necessities.Gender InequalityThroughout A Room of One’s Own, the narrator emphasizes the fact that women are treated unequally in her society and that this is why they have produced less impressive works of writing than men. To illustrate her point, the narrator creates a woman named Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary twin sister of William Shakespeare. The narrator uses Judith to show how society systematically discriminates against women. Judith is just as talented as her brother William, but while his talents are recognized and encouraged by their family and the rest of their society, Judith’s are underestimated and explicitly deemphasi zed. Judith writes, but she is secretive and ashamed of it. She is engaged at a fairly young age; when she begs not to have to marry, her beloved father beats her. She eventually commits suicide. The narrator invents the tragic figure of Judith to prove that a woman as talented as Shakespeare could never have achieved such success. Talent is an essential component of Shakespeare’s success, but because women are treated so differently, a female Shakespeare would have fared quite differently even if she’d had as much talent as Shakespeare did.SymbolsA Room of One’s OwnThe central point of A Room of One’s Own is that every woman needs a room of her own—something men are able to enjoy without question. A room of her own would provide a woman with the time and the space to engage in uninterrupted writing time. During Woolf’s time, women rarely enjoyed these luxuries. They remained elusive to women, and, as a result, their art suffered. But Woolf is concerned with more than just the room itself. She uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues, such as privacy, leisure time, and financial independence, each of which is an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women. Woolf predicts that until these inequalities are rectified, women will remain second-class citizens and their literary achievements will also be branded as such.。

room of one's own内容简介
《A Room of One's Own》是英国作家弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙于1929年出版的一部重要的女性主义文学批评作品。

这本书是根据伍尔芙于1928年在剑桥大学女子学院给女性学生的演讲而写成的。

在这本书中，伍尔芙以自己独特的文学风格和观点，探讨了女性在文学领域被边缘化的原因以及提出了改变这种状况的方法。

她强调了女性需要拥有独立的空间和经济独立，才能有条件发展自己的才华和创造力。

书中还探讨了性别在文学创作中的影响，以及女性作家在历史上被忽视和被排除的情况。

《A Room of One's Own》不仅对女性文学的发展产生了深远的影响，也成为了女性主义文学批评的经典之作。

它引起了对性别平等和女性权益的关注，提倡女性的独立和自由。

这本书的论点和观点也被广泛讨论和引用，影响了后来的女性主义思想和文学创作。

a room of one's own英语泛读教程-回复《A Room of One's Own英语泛读教程》是一本关于英语泛读的教材，侧重于解读《A Room of One's Own》这本英文书籍。

这本书是英国作家Virginia Woolf在1929年发表的一篇论文集，通过对女性文学和女性创作条件的探索，提出了女性需要拥有自己的房间和独立的经济来源，以便更好地发展她们的创作能力。

本教程将逐步回答这本书中所讨论的主题和问题。

首先，该教程将介绍《A Room of One's Own》的背景和作者。

这本书是基于Virginia Woolf在1928年发表的关于女性和写作的演讲，展示了她对女性创作条件的独特见解。

Virginia Woolf是20世纪最著名的英国女作家之一，她的作品以其创新和复杂的叙事技巧著称。

接下来，教程将对书中讨论的主题进行详细解读。

首先，它将解释Virginia Woolf认为女性文学一直被男性主导的原因，以及这对女性写作的影响。

她指出，由于历史上的社会和经济限制，女性一直缺乏自我表达的机会和自由。

她认为，女性需要有自己的房间和经济独立，才能真正解放和发展自己的创作才能。

教程还将深入探讨《A Room of One's Own》中关于女性创作条件的论断。

它将解释Virginia Woolf为什么认为女性需要私密的空间来思考和创作。

通过分析历史上一些著名女性作家的限制和困扰，教程将突出女性创作过程中所面临的挑战，以及这些挑战如何影响了她们的作品的质量和内容。

然后，教程将探讨Virginia Woolf对女性经济独立的看法。

通过解读书中的论据和观点，教程将阐明为什么经济独立对女性创作至关重要。

它将解释经济独立如何使女性摆脱对他人的依赖，以及如何帮助她们更好地发展自己的创作能力。

最后，教程将总结《A Room of One's Own》中的主要观点，并提供对这些观点的个人看法和审视。

What makes a good female writer?--A look into Woolf’s feminism attitude As a so-called pioneer feminist and a real enthusiast for female writers, Virginia Woolf has always been deeply concerned with the fate of women and their emancipation. In the book A Room of One’s Own, she clearly presents the arduous battle towards women’s emancipation, the utmost state of which is to be a female writer in Woolf’s mind. So what exactly are those impediments that prevent women to be good writers?The first thing Woolf mentions is the restrictions in the society, particularly those related to education. How disappointed and resentful she must be to be chased away from the lawn by a beadle and refused entry to the library unless accompanied by a fellow. But such social restrictions are just representations to some deep-buried reasons, concerning the poor image of women. Why are women poor? Woolf shouts out angrily. She becomes even more furious to find that “we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex”. She goes on to seek for an answer and later we see her scolding our mothers for not leaving us a penny. What a good satire Woolf is making here! For the very reason why women are poor is that, instead of making money, they have had children. The long-stand stereotype from our society for women has tied women tightly that prohibits them to do anything other than bear and raise children.All the practical elements in society for the last several centuries, marriage, family, economy, education, law and alike have been acting adversely towards women. Under such patriarchal control, it is almost impossible for women to settle down and write fiction. Although few succeeded in doing this, like Jane Austin and others, they were undoubtedly affected in their work as fail to express their genius “whole and entire”.Woolf’s answer to all these external obstacles is: go and have money. Whether it is inherited or winned by chance, a woman must have money to free herself from being inferior to man.Money is sure very important, yet women still found themselves unable to write because they had no tradition to follow. It is useless for them to go to the great men writers for help because men and women think differently. They may learn a few tricks of them but the spirit of women fiction is nowhere to find. In the society where men are far superior over women, they must also come to monopolize the culture. Masculine hegemony in culture is the more eternal reason for this question. As only men have the right to create literature, they actually decide what women are like. This also accounts for the reason why the images of women vary greatly from evil to angel in literature. Woolf’s admonishment are that: kill the self-constrain buried deep in women’s heart and try to express out the true self. The most dreadful form of suppression is self-repression and self-surrender which may well happen in the masculine hegemony environment. And due to this, Woolf raised her second suggestion: find a room of one’s own. This room refers to both practical and symbolic meanings. Find a room of one’s own, shut down all the disturbances from the outside world, form those arrogant men and let the women’s heart fly and soar. Only by writing and writing can women elaborate their work and strive upward to be a good writer. Just as Woolf herself said when explaining the reasons for A Room of One’s Own: “I wanted to encourage the young women, they seem to get fully depressed.”。

a room of one's own英语泛读教程-回复"英语泛读教程：《A Room of One's Own》"《A Room of One's Own》是英国作家Virginia Woolf创作的一篇经典散文。

这篇文章以"一个人的房间"为主题，通过叙述作者的思考和观察，探讨了妇女在文学创作和社会地位方面所面临的挑战和障碍。

本文将从内容概要、主要观点和对其启示三个方面详细解读《A Room of One's Own》。

首先，让我们简要概括一下《A Room of One's Own》的内容。

文章以一个没有名字的女性作家为叙述人，她在途中访问了剑桥大学和国王学院。

在这个过程中，她反思了妇女在文学创作方面所面临的障碍。

作者发现，过去历史上的文学作品主要由男性所创作，他们也更容易获得教育和培训。

而妇女则被社会的限制和束缚所困扰，她们很难获得自由的时间和独立的思考空间。

在接下来的叙述中，作者通过对文学创作和生活环境的分析，提出了妇女需要"一个人的房间"来实现自由创作的重要性。

其次，让我们更深入地了解《A Room of One's Own》的主要观点。

文章主要探讨了两个方面：金钱和独立思考空间。

作者认为，要想进行独立的思考和文学创作，妇女需要有足够的金钱来支持自己的生活，并拥有一个属于自己的房间。

这个房间不仅是物质上的空间，更是心灵的自由空间。

只有在拥有一定的经济稳定和个人独立的基础上，妇女才能摆脱社会束缚，自由地发挥自己的才华和创造力。

同时，作者还讨论了女性在文学创作中的地位和限制。

她认为，文学作品应该摒弃性别歧视，唯有这样，妇女才能获得平等的创作环境和机会。

最后，让我们思考一下《A Room of One's Own》给我们带来的启示。

通过阅读这篇文章，我们意识到不仅仅是妇女，每个人都需要有足够的自由空间和经济支持来追求自己的兴趣和激发创造力。

Bibliography and Literary MethodsNov.18, 2015 Feminist Ideas in A Room of One’s OwnVirginia Woolf was one of the most prominent literary figures of the twentieth century, a famous novelist, critic, and essayist. Her most famous works include Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse , Orlando, and the essay A Room of One’s Own. A Room of One’s Own is that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She put forward the thesis that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf was much concerned with the position of women, especially professional women, and the conditions they suffered under. A Room of One’s Own embodies her unique female consciousness and feminist ideas.Firstly, Woolf observed that having a private room in which to think and write is a basic requirement for producing literature. After I carefully studied this book, I had a deep understanding of this article. In this essay, the basic difficulty of female writers is no space available for writing, and no house belongs to them. Woolf said that in male supremacy society, t hough women broke into the male’s dominant areas for writing, the novel writing as their hobbies and careers, but women’s conditions are still very bad. She gives an example, like Jane Austen. From this we found that the room is not only refer to a place for writing, but also refer to some deeper meanings. She used the room as a symbol, such as privacy, leisure time, each of which was an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women.Secondly, wome n writing can’t go without economic security.That means women must strive for financial independents. Lacking of money is adverse for writing which causes women lack knowledge and shallow reading. No money, women cannot go to school or purchase books which can enlarge their knowledge. No money, women cannot fight for their rights. Without money, women were dependent on men; without privacy, constant interruptions blocked their creativities.Thirdly, Woolf discussed the relationship between men and women. She argued that they should be equal in society, and endeavored to search for equality between them. From her description, we come to realize that women must obey the will of their parents; otherwise, they would be punished. And money is very important for her, and has changed her life completely. The author held view that the relationship between men and women changed greatly after women had money. Women were not secondary to men, and they are equal at least. They need objective social environment for writing. She pondered over the inner state of women’s writing. On the basis of this point, Woolf put forward the famous theory of “androgynous vision”Virginia Woolf’s female consciousness has very important significance for feminism. She not only criticized the patriarchal culture included into the literary criticism consciousness but made the feminist question as an important thinking dimension. Generally, she made great contributions to increasing the importance of feminist and further developing female status.BibliographyWang, lieqin. “Declarations of New Women: A Feminist Interpretation of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.” Foreign Language and Literature 29.4 (2013): 36-39. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1989.。

a room of one's own英语泛读教程-回复如何在阅读《一个人的房间》时提高英语泛读能力。

首先，泛读就是一种快速阅读的技能，可以帮助我们更快地获取信息和理解一本书的大意，这也是提高英语阅读能力的重要方法。

而《一个人的房间》则是一本经典的关于女权主义和文学创作的论文，它对于英语学习者來说，是极具挑战性的。

那么，我们应该怎样使用泛读技巧来更好地阅读这本书呢？首先，要有清晰明确的阅读目标和计划。

在阅读《一个人的房间》时，我们可以先查看目录和大纲，了解其内容大概涉及到了哪些方面，然后根据我们自身需要和兴趣，选择性地阅读部分篇章。

比如，我们可以选择阅读关于女性作家的章节，或者是关于女性与教育的部分，以便更好地理解作者的主旨和思想。

其次，要使用快速阅读技巧。

泛读的核心就是要快速阅读，并将重点放在理解核心意义上，而不是深入细节。

阅读时，可以跳过熟词和常见表述的段落，略读长篇章节的第一句话或最后一句话，从而快速获取整本书的概貌和主旨。

我们可以尝试着在短时间内阅读一个篇章，然后再回过头来详细阅读、研究其细节。

这种泛读和精读相结合的方法，可以帮助我们更好地理解一本书。

第三，培养阅读信心和兴趣。

这本书是英语文学和女权主义的经典著作，它涉及到的主题、思想和词汇会比一般的英语书籍更具深度和难度。

因此，当我们阅读它时，一定要有信心和耐心，不要放弃。

此外，我们可以寻找与《一个人的房间》相关的其他文献、电影或音乐等，以扩大我们对这本书的认知和理解，进而培养阅读兴趣。

最后，记得多加练习。

英语泛读是一种技能，需要不断地练习和实践，才能够取得进步。

我们可以选择其他英语书籍、新闻，或者是网上的英语文章，进行泛读练习，并逐渐提高我们的阅读速度和理解能力。

总之，阅读《一个人的房间》是对英语学习者泛读技能和阅读能力的一次挑战，但同时也是一个极好的提高英语能力和拓展知识广度的机会。

只要具备正确的阅读目标和计划，使用快速阅读技巧，培养自信和兴趣，并不断加强练习，我们就能在这个过程中取得良好的成果。

《一间自己的房间》英语读后感英文回答：I recently read the book "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, and it left a profound impact on me. The book explores the importance of having a space of one's own, particularly for women, in order to pursue their passions and achieve independence. Woolf argues that without a roomof one's own, women are limited in their ability to think freely and create.The concept of having a room of one's own resonatedwith me deeply. It made me reflect on my own livingsituation and the significance of having a space that is solely mine. In today's fast-paced and crowded world, it is easy to overlook the importance of personal space. We often find ourselves constantly surrounded by others, whether it be at work, school, or even at home. Having a room of one's own provides a sanctuary, a place where we can retreat to and be alone with our thoughts.For me, having my own room has allowed me to pursue my hobbies and interests without any distractions. It is a space where I can read, write, and engage in creative activities. I have decorated it with things that inspire me, such as artwork, photographs, and quotes. Whenever I enter my room, I instantly feel a sense of calm and tranquility.It is a space that reflects my personality and allows me to express myself freely.Moreover, having a room of my own has also given me a sense of independence and autonomy. It is a place where I can make my own decisions and have control over my surroundings. I can arrange the furniture, choose the color scheme, and create an environment that suits my needs and preferences. This sense of ownership has empowered me and made me more confident in my abilities.In addition to the physical aspects, having a room of one's own also has emotional and psychological benefits. It provides a sense of privacy and solitude, which isessential for self-reflection and introspection. It allowsus to escape from the demands and expectations of the outside world and focus on ourselves. In this space, we can recharge and rejuvenate, ready to face the challenges that lie ahead.To conclude, the book "A Room of One's Own" has made me realize the importance of having a space that is solely mine. It has taught me the value of personal space and the impact it can have on our well-being and personal growth. Having a room of one's own is not just a physical space, but also a symbol of freedom, independence, and self-expression.中文回答：最近我读了弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫的《一间自己的房间》，这本书给我留下了深刻的印象。

Questions:Woolf claims that the particular social realities in which women live create distinctively female values and outlooks. Does she think this is a good thing or a bad thing?What is the role of tradition in the experience of a women writer? In that of writers in general?A Room of One’s OwnVirginia Woolf 1Abridged[1] That one would find any woman in that state of mind in the sixteenth century was obviously impossible. One has only to think of the Elizabethan2tombstones with all those children kneeling with clasped hands; and their early deaths; and to see their houses with their dark, cramped rooms, to realize that no woman could have written poetry then. What one would expect to find would be that rather later perhaps some great lady would take advantage of her comparative freedom and comfort to publish something with her name to it and risk being thought a monster. Men, of course, are not snobs, but they appreciate with sympathy for the most part the efforts of a countess to write verse. One would expect to find a lady of title meeting with far greater encouragement than an unknown Miss Austen or a Miss Brontë at that time would have met with. But one would also expect to find that her mind was disturbed by alien emotions like fear and hatred and that her poems showed traces of that disturbance. Here is Lady Winchilsea3, for example, I thought, taking down her poems.She was born in the year 1661; she was noble both by birth and by marriage; she was childless; she wrote poetry, and one has only to open her poetry to find her bursting out in indignation against the position of women:How we are fallen! fallen by mistaken rules,And Education’s more than Nature’s fools;Debarred from all improvements of the mind,And to be dull, expected and designed;And if someone would soar above the rest,With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed,So strong the opposing faction still appears,The hopes to thrive can ne’er4 outweigh the fears.5The human race is split up for her into two parties.’; Men are the ‘op posing faction men are hated and feared, because they have the power to bar her way to what she wants to d o—which is to write.[2] It was a thousand pities that the woman who could write like that, whose mind was tuned to nature and reflection, should have been forced to anger and bitterness. But how could she have helped herself? I asked, imagining the sneers and the laughter, the adulation of the toadies, the scepticism of the professional poet. She must have shut herself up in a room in the country to write, and been torn asunder by bitterness and scruples perhaps, though her husband was of the kindest, and their married life perfection. She ‘must have’, I say, because when one comes to seek out the facts about Lady Winchilsea, one finds, as usual, that almost nothing is known about her.Putting her back on the shelf, I turned to the other great lady, the Duchess whom Lamb loved, harebrained, fantastical Margaret of Newcastle6. They were very different, but alike in this that both were noble and both childless, and both were married to the best of husbands. In both burnt the same passion for poetry and both are disfigured and deformed by the same causes. Open the Duchess and one finds the same outburs t of rage. ‘Women live like Bats or Owls, labour like Beasts, and die like Worms. . .’7Margaret too might have been a poet. She should have had a microscope put in her hand. She should have been taught to look at the stars and reason scientifically. Her wits were turned with solitude and freedom. No one checked her. No one taught her. The professors fawned on her. At Court they jeered at her. She shut herself up at Welbeck8 alone.[3] Here, I remembered, putting away the Duchess and opening Dorothy Osborne’s letters9. The strange thing is, what a gift that untaught and solitary girl had for the framing of a sentence, for the fashioning of a scene. Listen to her running on:most commonly when we are in the middest of our discourse one looks aboute her and spyes her Cow’s goeing into the Corne and then away they all run, as if they had wing’s at theire heels. I that am not soe nimble stay behinde, and when I see them driveing home theire Cattle I think tis time for mee to retyre too.[4]One could have sworn that she had the makings of a writer in her. And so we come, I continued, replacing the single short volume of Dorothy Osborne’s letters upon the shelf, to Mrs Behn10.[5] And with Mrs Behn we turn a very important corner on the road. We leave behind, shut up in their parks among their folios11, those solitary great ladies who wrote without audience or criticism, for their own delight alone. We come to town and rub shoulders with ordinary people in the streets. Mrs Behn was a middle–class woman with all the plebeian virtues of humour, vitality and courage; a woman forced by the death of her husband and some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits. She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote, even the splendid ‘A Thousand Martyrs I have made’12, or ‘Love in Fantastic Triumph sat’13, for here begins the freedom of the mind, or rather the possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it likes.[6] Aphra Behn proved that money could be made by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a sign of folly and a distracted mind, but was of practical importance. A husband might die, or some disaster overtakes the family. Hundreds of women began as the eighteenth century drew on to add to their pin money14,or to come to the rescue of their families by making translations or writing the innumerable novels which have ceased to be recorded even in text–books, but are to be picked up in the fourpenny boxes in the Charing Cross Road15. The extreme activity of mind which showed itself in the later eighteenth century among women—the talking, and the meeting, the writing of essays on Shakespeare, the translating of the classics—was founded on the solid fact that women could make money by writing. Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for. Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century a change came about which, if I were rewriting history, I should describemore fully and think of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses16.[7]The middle–class woman began to write. For if PRIDE AND PREJUDICE matters, and MIDDLEMARCH and VILLETTE and WUTHERING HEIGHTS17matter, then it matters far more than I can prove in an hour’s discourse that women generally, and not merely the lonely aristocrat shut up in her country house among her folios and her flatterers, took to writing. All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn in Westminster Abbey18 for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she—shady and amorous as she was.—who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you to–night: Earn five hundred a year by your wits.[8] Here, then, one had reached the early nineteenth century. And here, for the first time, I found several shelves given up entirely to the works of women. But why, I could not help asking, as I ran my eyes over them, were they, with very few exceptions, all novels? Looking at the four famous names, what had George Eliot in common with Emily Brontë? Did not Charlotte Brontëfail entirely to understand Jane Austen? Save for the possibly relevant fact that not one of them had a child, four more incongruous characters could not have met together in a room so much so that it is tempting to invent a meeting and a dialogue between them. Yet by some strange force they were all compelled when they wrote, to write novels. Had it something to do with being born of the middle class? As Miss Emily Davies19was so strikingly to demonstrate, that the middleclass family in the early nineteenth century was possessed only of a single sitting–room between them. If a woman wrote, she would have to write in the common sitting–room. She was always interrupted. Still it would be easier to write prose and fiction there than to write poetry or a play. Less concentration is required. Jane Austen wrote like that to the end of her days. ‘How she was able to effect all this’, her nephew writes in his Memoir, ‘is surprising, for she had no separate study to repair to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting–room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions. She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by s ervants or visitors or any persons beyond her own family party.’ Jane Austen hid her manuscripts or covered them with a piece of blotting–paper. Then, again, all the literary training that a woman had in the early nineteenth century was training in the observation of character, in the analysis of emotion. Her sensibility had been educated for centuries by the influences of the common sitting–room. People’s feelings were impressed on her; personal relations were always before her eyes. Therefore, when the middle–class woman took to writing, she naturally wrote novels, even though, as seems evident enough, two of the four famous women here named were not by nature novelists. Emily Brontë should have written poetic plays; the overflow of George Eliot’s capacious mind should have spread itself when the creative impulse was spent upon history or biography.Notes:1.Virginia Woolf1882-1941, famous English novelist, essayist, critic, and feminist, was one of the foremost leaders of the literary movement of Modernism. As a novelist Woolf's primary was not on plot orcharacterization but on a character's consciousness, his thoughts and feelings, which she brilliantly illuminated by the stream of consciousness technique. Her most famous novels include Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando.A Room of One's Own is an extended essay, based on Woolf's lectures at Cambridge University in 1928. In it, Wolfe addresses her thoughts on "the question of women and fiction". Her chief standing on it is “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to write." The excerpt is the condensation of Chapter Four of the essay.2. Elizabethan:of, relating to, or characteristic of Elizabeth I of England or her reign (1558-1603).3. Lady Winchilsea: Anne, daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sidmonton, married colonel Heneage Finch, afterwards Earl of Winchilsea. In 1690, Ardelia (her name as authoress) settled at beautiful Eastwell and began to write verses for circulation among her noble friends.4.ne’er: [poetic] never.5.This selection is from Lady Winchilsea’s poem entitled The Introduction.6. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) is unique among women writers ofthe seventeenth century both in the scale of her output and in her aspiration to create a philosophical system.7. This line is from Margaret Cavendish’s poem entitled Female Orations (1662).8. This line is from Margaret Cavendish’s poem entitled Female Orations (1662).9. Dorothy Osborne(1627-1695), afterwards Lady Temple, wife of Sir William Temple hasbecome known for the letters she wrote to her future husband before their marriage. These letters, written in a conversational style, present a vivid picture of the life of a young gentlewoman in the middle of the seventeenth century10.Aphra Behn (1640 -1689) was the first professional woman writer in English.11.Folios:books made with large sheets of paper especially as used in early printing.12.This line is from Behn’s poem entitled The Libertine.13.This line is from Behn’s poem entitled Song from Abdelazar.14.Pin money: pocket money15.Charing Cross Road: a street in London lined with numerous bookstores.16.The Wars of the Roses:a series of civil wars fought in medieval England from 1455 to1487 between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The name Wars of the Roses is based on the badges used by the two sides, the red rose for the Lancastrians and the white rose for the Yorkists.17.Pride and Prejudice: a novel by Jane Austin, Middlemarch by George Eliot, VILLETTE byCharlotte Bronte, Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte.18.Westminster Abbey: Famous church located in London. Almost all English monarchs sinceWilliam the Conqueror have been crowned there. Distinguished English subjects are buried there.19.Davies, Emily (Sarah Emily Davies):1830–1921, British feminist, co-founder of GirtonCollege, Cambridge. From 1866 she was closely associated with the English woman-suffrage movement and was active in organizing the first woman-suffrage petition presented to Parliament by John Stuart Mill in 1866.。

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is a brilliant woman author in the English literary field during the 19th and 20th century. She is the pioneer among feminism critics. Her representative work A Room of One’s Own is widely considered “the first modern text of feminist criticism.” It is the first to expose and criticize patriarchy culture. She criticizes the inhibition of females from patriarchy culture and affirms the female literature tradition rejected by patriarchy society, finding a historical supporting point for female writing. She puts forward the idea that females should try to write from the dual - sex point of view without neglecting their own sex features, thus providing us greater value than those feminist critics excluding male writers. Then in my paper, I will try to analyze this work from the following aspects: instruction of A Room of One’s Own, feministic thoughts in A Room of One’s Own and the influence of her feministic thoughts in the literary field.First and foremost, A Room of One’s Own is based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in 1928. It is the inspirational source for the fundamental queries of a female literary tradition and is also much appreciated in the present post-modernist or post-feminist time. In this book thereare six chapters, in each section Virginia Woolf discusses the different aspects of the topic: women and fiction. In chapter one Virginia Woolf points out that western history so far has been the history of the patriarchy, a history written by men about men and for men. As daughters, wife, or mother, women have no equal rights and no economic independence. In chapter two, the topic is men’s anger. The narrator of the book, goes to the British Museum to find out a series of questions, such as“why did men drink wine and women water?”and the aunt,“Mary Baton”leaves the narrator a legacy of 500 pounds a year, and this legacy has its special hints. In chapter three, the narrator decides to investigate women in Elizabethan England, puzzled why there were no women writers in that fertile literary period. She believes there is a deep connection between living conditions and writing. In chapter four, the narrator makes up a story of Judith Shakespeare, supposedly the sister to the great Elizabethan playwright. Judith is full of adventurous spirit and rich imagination, but she is not sent to school, as her brother is, to learn grammar and logic. Finally her brother goes to London and becomes a great dramatist, while she dies and is buried at crossing roads. Actually the story is a miniature of the pathetic life of women, especially women of talent and ambition in theold days. In chapter five, the narrator thinks that the female writers, now given a better education, no longer need novels as a means of self-expression. She shows the readers an enormous change in the state of writing: an average female writer is finally able to write without anger or hatred, without a stifling awareness of her gender, with a standard “feminine” sentence as a model. In chapter six, the narrator opens with a story of a man and woman meeting on the street and she puts forward a term: androgynous mind.Also, A Room of One’s Own is a classic work about feministic thoughts. From this book, we can get to know the three major thoughts of Virginia Woolf: having a room of one’s own, having their own way of writing, having their own voice and androgyny. Firstly, Woolf thinks that in the society of patriarchy during the Victorian period, women have been confined to the very limited sphere of domestic life, to be trained after the traditional model of femininity, and to bury themselves in the endless trivial housework, with no money, no rest, no private space, and no chance for self-realization. For example, Jane Austen did not have a study of her own, so she often finished her writings secretly in a corner of the living room. Every time when someone walked into the living room,she would hide her manuscripts immediately as literary writing was not an honorable career for women. Thus, Woolf makes the most famous statement: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,”and “that it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry.” Besides, the room itself means not only a space; it is a metaphorical reference to a state of complete independence and freedom, where a woman can return to her real self. She can feel, think, and act as she likes without considering her own position and sex. Only in such a state of absolute independence and freedom can a woman create really great literature. Secondly, in A Room of One’s Own, Woolf employs the first narrator “I”to communicate with the audience the topic-women and fiction. However, “I”in this book does not refer to Virginia Woolf, but to Mary. “Mary” is not a specific individual, but refers to different types of women. Woolf fabricated a narrator, events, and places in order to discuss the creative talents of female writing and express her own points of view. In Woolf’s day, if a woman wanted to express her opinions, she would face a number of obstacles. Thus, a fictional narrator is put into use. Meanwhile, this is also a revolt to the patriarchy of the society where women hadalmost no opportunity to express their opinions. Thirdly, the definition of “Androgyny”is one of the important thoughts of feminism and feministic criticism. Woolf defines the androgynous nature of the perfect human mind as two opposite and sexed presiding powers working in harmony. She describes the relation in the following simple statements: “In the man’s brain the man predominates over the woman and in the woman’s brain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating. If one is a man, still the woman part of his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her.” The core of Woolf’s androgynous aesthetic is sexual transcendence. While allowing sexual differences, she is opposed to the simplistic emphasis of sexual differences and exclusiveness, or single-sexedness, and is skeptical of all sexual branding. The real world, she believes, is far more sophisticated than the simplistic duality of man vs. woman, or male vs. female. In her own fiction, she undermines and subverts the conventional concept of sex, and makes sexual difference a question. As in Mrs. Dalloway, she portrays the complicated and uncertain nature of sexual identity. Also, in To the Lighthouse, she explores the difficulty as well as thepossibility of the ideal of androgynous being. And Woolf also points out that if one wants to achieve the effects of。

a room of one's own梗概
《一个人的房间》（A Room of One's Own）是英国作家弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫（Virginia Woolf）于1929年发表的一篇演讲和随后出版的一部文章。

这篇文章探讨了妇女在文学和社会中的地位以及她们在创作中所面临的挑战。

文章以一个假想的情景为背景，描述了作者被告知在大学图书馆写作时需要一个房间和财务独立。

伍尔夫指出，这样的条件对于男性来说是理所当然的，但对于女性来说却常常无法实现。

她认为，缺乏自主空间和财务独立，以及长期以来对女性教育的限制，是阻碍女性创作的主要障碍之一。

在文字中，伍尔夫回顾了历史上许多杰出的女性作家的生活和作品，并对她们受到的种种压迫和剥夺进行了探讨。

她认为，女性创作的条件必须改变，让她们有机会发展自己的声音和创造力。

她坚称，女性需要独立的空间和经济自主权，才能真正成为独立思考和写作的个体。

《一个人的房间》被广泛认为是女性主义文学批评和女性独立问题的经典著作之一。

文章以深刻的洞察和独特的文学表达风格，探讨了性别不平等问题，并呼吁为女性提供更多平等和自由的可能性。

A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBookTitle: A Room of One's OwnAuthor: Virginia WoolfA ROOM OF ONES OWN[* This essay is based upon two papers read to the Arts Society at Newnharn and the Odtaa at Girton in October 1928. The papers were too long to be read in full, and have since been altered and expanded.]ONEBut, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction--what, has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain. Whenyou asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Bront雜and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. 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 that they write; or itmight mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider thesubject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon sawthat it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, thefirst duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour's discourse a nuggetof pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinionupon one minor point--a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the greatproblem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon thesetwo questions--women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely asI can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I laybare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you willfind that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial--and any question about sex is that--one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show howone came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fictionhere is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell youthe story of the two days that preceded my coming here--how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need notsay that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; 'I' is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth andto decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it.Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please--it is not a matter of any importance) sitting onthe banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been.There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought--tocall it by a prouder name than it deserved--had let its line down intothe stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink ituntil--you know the little tug--the sudden conglomeration of an idea atthe end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, howinsignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious propertyof its kind--put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting,and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossibleto sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extremerapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of acurious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding.What idea it had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing I could not now remember. The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courtsand quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning. Strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed smoothed away; the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no sound could penetrate, and the mind, freed from any contact with facts (unless one trespassed on the turf again), was at liberty to settle down upon whatever meditation was in harmony with the moment. As chance would have it, some stray memory of some old essay about revisiting Oxbridge in the long vacation brought Charles Lamb to mind--Saint Charles, said Thackeray, putting a letter of Lamb's to his forehead. Indeed, among all the dead (I give you my thoughts as they came to me), Lamb is one of the most congenial; one to whom one would have liked to say, Tell me then how you wrote your essays? For his essays are superior even to Max Beerbohm's, I thought, with all their perfection, because of that wild flash of imagination, that lightningcrack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed and imperfect, but starred with poetry. Lamb then came to Oxbridge perhaps ahundred years ago. Certainly he wrote an essay--the name escapesme--about the manuscript of one of Milton's poems which he saw here. It was L YCIDAS perhaps, and Lamb wrote how it shocked him to think it possible that any word in L YCIDAS could have been different from what it is. To think of Milton changing the words in that poem seemed to him a sort of sacrilege. This led me to remember what I could of L YCIDAS and to amuse myself with guessing which word it could have been that Milton had altered, and why. It then occurred to me that the very manuscriptitself which Lamb had looked at was only a few hundred yards away, so that one could follow Lamb's footsteps across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure is kept. Moreover, I recollected, as Iput this plan into execution, it is in this famous library that the manuscript of Thackeray's ESMOND is also preserved. The critics often say that ESMOND is Thackeray's most perfect novel. But the affectation of the style, with its imitation of the eighteenth century, hampers one,so far as I can remember; unless indeed the eighteenth-century style was natural to Thackeray--a fact that one might prove by looking at the manuscript and seeing whether the alterations were for the benefit ofthe style or of the sense. But then one would have to decide what isstyle and what is meaning, a question which--but here I was actually atthe door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with aflutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery,kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow ofthe College or furnished with a letter of introduction.That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently andwill, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wakethose echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I descended the steps in anger. Still an hour remained before luncheon,and what was one to do? Stroll on the meadows? sit by the river? Certainly it was a lovely autumn morning; the leaves were fluttering redto the ground; there was no great hardship in doing either. But thesound of music reached my ear. Some service or celebration was going forward. The organ complained magnificently as I passed the chapel door. Even the sorrow of Christianity sounded in that serene air more like the recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself; even the groanings of the ancient organ seemed lapped in peace. I had no wish to enter had I the right, and this time the verger might have stopped me, demanding perhaps my baptismal certificate, or a letter of introduction from the Dean. Butthe outside of these magnificent buildings is often as beautiful as theinside. Moreover, it was amusing enough to watch the congregation assembling, coming in and going out again, busying themselves at the door of the chapel like bees at the mouth of a hive. Many were in capand gown; some had tufts of fur on their shoulders; others were wheeled in bath-chairs; others, though not past middle age, seemed creased and crushed into shapes so singular that one was reminded of those giant crabs and crayfish who heave with difficulty across the sand of an aquarium. As I leant against the wall the University indeed seemed a sanctuary in which are preserved rare types which would soon be obsolete if left to fight for existence on the pavement of the Strand. Oldstories of old deans and old dons came back to mind, but before I had summoned up courage to whistle--it used to be said that at the sound ofa whistle old Professor ---- instantly broke into a gallop--the venerable congregation had gone inside. The outside of the chapel remained. As you know, its high domes and pinnacles can be seen, like a sailing-ship always voyaging never arriving, lit up at night and visible for miles,far away across the hills. Once, presumably, this quadrangle with its smooth lawns, its massive buildings and the chapel itself was marsh too, where the grasses waved and the swine rootled. Teams of horses and oxen, I thought, must have hauled the stone in wagons from far countries, and then with infinite labour the grey blocks in whose shade I was now standing were poised in order one on top of another. and then the painters brought their glass for the windows, and the masons were busy for centuries up on that roof with putty and cement, spade and trowel. Every Saturday somebody must have poured gold and silver out of a leathern purse into their ancient fists, for they had their beer andskittles presumably of an evening. An unending stream of gold and silver, I thought, must have flowed into this court perpetually to keepthe stones coming and the masons working; to level, to ditch, to dig and to drain. But it was then the age of faith, and money was pouredliberally to set these stones on a deep foundation, and when the stones were raised, still more money was poured in from the coffers of kings and queens and great nobles to ensure that hymns should be sung here and scholars taught. Lands were granted; tithes were paid. And when the age of faith was over and the age of reason had come, still the same flow of gold and silver went on; fellowships were founded; lectureships endowed; only the gold and silver flowed now, not from the coffers of the king.but from the chests of merchants and manufacturers, from the purses of men who had made, say, a fortune from industry, and returned, in their wills, a bounteous share of it to endow more chairs, more lectureships, more fellowships in the university where they had learnt their craft. Hence the libraries and laboratories; the observatories; the splendid equipment of costly and delicate instruments which now stands on glass shelves, where centuries ago the grasses waved and the swine rootled.Certainly, as I strolled round the court, the foundation of gold andsilver seemed deep enough; the pavement laid solidly over the wild grasses. Men with trays on their heads went busily from staircase to staircase. Gaudy blossoms flowered in window-boxes. The strains of the gramophone blared out from the rooms within. It was impossible not to reflect--the reflection whatever it may have been was cut short. The clock struck. it was time to find one's way to luncheon.It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten. It is part of the novelist's convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine. Here, however, I shall take the libertyto defy that convention and to tell you that the lunch on this occasion began with soles, sunk in a deep dish, over which the college cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream, save that it was branded here and there with brown spots like the spots on the flanks of a doe. After that came the partridges, but if this suggests a couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. The partridges, many and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and the sweet, each in its order; their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard;their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent. And no sooner had the roast and its retinue been done with than the silent servingman, the Beadle himself perhaps in a milder manifestation, set before us, wreathed in napkins, a confection which rose all sugar from the waves. To call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would be an insult. Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hardlittle electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and outupon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company--in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in thewindow-seat.If by good luck there had been an ash-tray handy, if one had not knocked the ash out of the window in default, if things had been a littledifferent from what they were, one would not have seen, presumably, acat without a tail. The sight of that abrupt and truncated animalpadding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence the emotional light for me. It was as if someone had let fall a shade. Perhaps the excellent hock was relinquishing its hold. Certainly, as I watched the Manx cat pause inthe middle of the lawn as if it too questioned the universe, something seemed lacking, something seemed different. But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk? And to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past,before the war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these; but different. Everything was different. Meanwhile the talk went on among the guests, who were many and young, some of this sex, some of that; it went on swimmingly, it went on agreeably, freely, amusingly. And as it went on I set it against the background of that other talk, and as I matched thetwo together I had no doubt that one was the descendant, the legitimate heir of the other. Nothing was changed; nothing was different save only here I listened with all my ears not entirely to what was being said,but to the murmur or current behind it. Yes, that was it--the change was there. Before the war at a luncheon party like this people would havesaid precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise, not articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value ofthe words themselves. Could one set that humming noise to words? Perhaps with the help of the poets one could.. A book lay beside me and, opening it, I turned casually enough to Tennyson. And here I found Tennyson was singing:There has fallen a splendid tearFrom the passion-flower at the gate.She is coming, my dove, my dear;She is coming, my life, my fate;The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near';And the white rose weeps, 'She is late';The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear';And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'Was that what men hummed at luncheon parties before the war? And the women?My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is in a water'd shoot;My heart is like an apple treeWhose. houghs are bent with thick-set fruit,My heart is like a rainbow shellThat paddles in a halcyon sea;My heart is gladder than all theseBecause my love is come to me.Was that what women hummed at luncheon parties before the war?There was something so ludicrous in thinking of people humming such things even under their breath at luncheon parties before the war that I burst out laughing. and had to explain my laughter by pointing at the Manx cat, who did look a little absurd, poor beast, without a tail, inthe middle of the lawn. Was he really born so, or had he lost his tailin an accident? The tailless cat, though some are said to exist in theIsle of Man, is rarer than one thinks. It is a queer animal, quaintrather than beautiful. It is strange what a difference a tail makes--you know the sort of things one says as a lunch party breaks up and people are finding their coats and hats.This one, thanks to the hospitality of the host, had lasted far into the afternoon. The beautiful October day was fading and the leaves were falling from the trees in the avenue as I walked through it. Gate after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me. Innumerable beadles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks; the treasure-house was being made secure for another night. After the avenue one comes out upon a road--I forget its name--which leads you, if you take the right turning, along to Fernham. But there was plenty of time. Dinner was not till half-past seven. One could almost do without dinner after such a luncheon. It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road. Those words----There has fallen a splendid tearFrom the passion-flower at the gate.She is coming, my dove, my dear----sang in my blood as I stepped quickly along towards Headingley. And then, switching off into the other measure, I sang, where the waters are churned up by the weir:My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is in a water'd shoot;My heart is like an apple tree . . .What poets, I cried aloud, as one does in the dusk, what poets theywere!In a sort of jealousy, I suppose, for our own age, silly and absurdthough these comparisons are, I went on to wonder if honestly one could name two living poets now as great as Tennyson and Christina Rossetti were then. Obviously it is impossible, I thought, looking into those foaming waters, to compare them. The very reason why that poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates somefeeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn outof us at the moment. One does not recognize it in the first place; oftenfor some reason one fears it; one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew. Hence the difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of this difficultythat one cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet. For this reason--that my memory failed me--the argument flagged for want of material. But why, I continued, moving on towards Headingley, have we stopped humming under our breath at luncheon parties? Why has Alfred ceased to singShe is coming, my dove, my dear.Why has Christina ceased to respondMy heart is gladder than all theseBecause my love is come to me?Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so plain in each other's eyes that romance was killed? Certainly it was a shock (to women in particular with their illusions about education, and so on) to see the faces of ourrulers in the light of the shell-fire. So ugly they looked--German, English, French--so stupid. But lay the blame where one will, on whom one will, the illusion which inspired Tennyson and Christina Rossetti to sing so passionately about the coming of their loves is far rarer nowthan then. One has only to read, to look, to listen, to remember. Butwhy say 'blame'? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place? For truth . . . those dots mark the spot where, in search of truth, I missedthe turning up to Fernham. Yes indeed, which was truth and which was illusion? I asked myself. What was the truth about these houses, for example, dim and festive now with their red windows in the dusk, but raw and red and squalid, with their sweets and their bootlaces, at nineo'clock in the morning? And the willows and the river and the gardens that run down to the river, vague now with the mist stealing over them, but gold and red in the sunlight--which was the truth, which was the illusion about them? I spare you the twists and turns of my cogitations, for no conclusion was found on the road to Headingley, and I ask You to suppose that I soon found out my mistake about the turning and retraced my steps to Fernham.As I have said already that it was an October day, I dare not forfeityour respect and imperil the fair name of fiction by changing the season and describing lilacs hanging over garden walls, crocuses, tulips and other flowers of spring. Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer thefacts the better the fiction--so we are told. Therefore it was stillautumn and the leaves were still yellow and falling, if anything, alittle faster than before, because it was now evening (seventwenty-three to be precise) and a breeze (from the south-west to be exact) had risen. But for all that there was something odd at work:My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is in a water'd shoot;My heart is like an apple treeWhose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit--perhaps the words of Christina Rossetti were partly responsible for the folly of the fancy--it was nothing of course but a fancy--that the lilac was shaking its flowers over the garden walls, and the brimstone butterflies were scudding hither and thither, and the dust of the pollen was in the air. A wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver grey in theair. It was the time between the lights when colours undergo theirintensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish (here I pushed into the garden, for, unwisely, the door was left open and no beadles seemed about), the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. The gardens of Fernham lay before me in the spring twilight, wild and open, and in the long grass, sprinkled and carelessly flung, were daffodils and bluebells, not orderly perhaps at the best of times, and now wind-blown and waving as they tugged at their roots. The windows of the building, curved like ships' windows among generous waves of red brick, changed from lemon to silver under the flight of the quick spring clouds. Somebody was in a hammock, somebody, but in this light they were phantoms only, half guessed, half seen, raced across the grass--would no one stop her?--and then on the terrace, as if popping out to breathe the air, to glance at the garden, came a bent figure, formidable yet humble, with her great forehead and her shabby dress--could it be the famous scholar, could it be J---- H---- herself? All was dim, yet intense too,as if the scarf which the dusk had flung over the garden were torn asunder by star or sword--the gash of some terrible reality leaping, asits way is, out of the heart of the spring. For youth----Here was my soup. Dinner was being served in the great dining-hall. Far from being spring it was in fact an evening in October. Everybody was assembled in the big dining-room. Dinner was ready. Here was the soup. It was a plain gravy soup. There was nothing to stir the fancy in that. One could have seen through the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have been on the plate itself. But there was no pattern. The plate was plain. Next came beef with its attendant greens and potatoes--a homely trinity, suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy market, and sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge, and bargaining and cheapening and women with string bags on Monday morning. There was no reason to complain of human nature's daily food, seeing that the supply was sufficient and coal-miners doubtless were sitting down to less. Prunes and custard followed. And if anyone complains that prunes, even when mitigated by custard, are an uncharitable vegetable (fruit they are not), stringy as a miser's heart and exuding a fluid such as might runin misers' veins who have denied themselves wine and warmth. for eighty years and yet not given to the poor, he should reflect that there are people whose charity embraces even the prune. Biscuits and cheese came next, and here the water-jug was liberally passed round, for it is the nature of biscuits to be dry, and these were biscuits to the core. Thatwas all. The meal was over. Everybody scraped their chairs back; the swing-doors swung violently to and fro; soon the hall was emptied of。

a room of one's own主要内容
2020读完的第一本书，是一本关于写作与女权的书。

这本书透过作家这个行业来揭示女性受到的性别歧视，鼓励女性通过写作来表达想法，但要想成为一个作家，作者认为有两个条件：earn money and have a room of your own即思想自由和财务自由。

伍尔夫还是从一开始就把读者带入她所想象的世界中，带着读者经历，目睹，思考那个想象空间中的故事。

想象空间中，从一开始在Oxbridge附近漫步但因为是女性被阻拦，作者开始思考社会对女性的认知经历了怎样的过程发展成为今天的样子。

伍尔夫是从文学作品入手的。

通过梳理英国文学史，她试图解答为什么女性作家那么少，为什么女性作家写出的经典作品那么少这两个问题。

最后，作者指出女性要靠自己努力实现独立并鼓励女性写作让更多的人听到女性的声音。

我读的时候有一瞬间感觉有点迷，感觉抓不到作者的线，一会写这一会写那，这时候正好看到有读者评论道：意识流就像是一条九曲十八弯的河，你以为是绕来绕去没有方向，最后发现还是那条河。

伍尔夫写的两本著名的意识流小说我还没读过，选择读这本书其实也是刚刚好看到加上这本书跟我们高英课学到的Professions of women相关。

书里提到
的很多女性受到的偏见和歧视在我们这个社会好了很多。

女权是追求男女平权，争取更多的权力也伴随更多的义务，总之，要独立，要勇敢。

这本书比较文学性较强，作者的思考也很深刻，是一篇不错的文章，值得一看。