Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, the name sounds epic. I breath it in and out once more, Virginia Woolf. This name has been elusive to me.

In college, I knew little about who Virginia Woolf was or what she was about. Whenever I heard her name, I thought about The Brother's Grimm or some other fairy tale writer. I pictured her writing the story about the dancing shoes that made the child wearing them dance until they died. A gruesome story, but one I thought befitting to someone named Virginia Woolf.

I didn't know who Virginia Woolf was.

I happened upon a book she wrote last November. Dave and I were flying back from Omaha and we stopped at a bookshop in the airport. I picked up A Room of One's Own and turned it over in my hand. The back cover talked about Virginia Woolf's theory that, "women must have a fixed income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create." What a devilish book this must have been when it was published.

In 1929, the idea that dedicating a room to a woman for creative purposes, would have been seen as extraordinary. Virginia Woolf mentions how little was invested into a woman's education. She laments her own lack of education and pines for a college with wealthy donors, whose walls were built from the coffer's of kings, such as the men's colleges. She states that the mind of a woman held less creative and intellectual value than that of a man. Not because a woman couldn't possess creative or intellectual genius, but because they were not afforded opportunities to develop either of these attributes.

When asked why she wrote A Room of One's Own, she says, " I wanted to encourage the young women--they seem to get fearfully depressed."

Virginia Woolf.