A Room of One's Own, Questions Chapter 5

Chapter Five   Contemporary Fiction: Mary Carmichael & what to write about?          (At the Home Library Yet Again)          1. recapitulation: idea of tradition         2. Idea of "Novelty": reader-author agreement         3. What would happen if the men, or protagonists, of the great works in Literature were seen only in relation to females, but also only as lovers?          4. The problem with praise          5. Inspiration & the contrast between the two worlds: importance of a difference of value          6.  The creative power of women          7. ...the vague look, "I remember nothing"          8. the use of satire: the nape of the neck          9. Historical Progress: the bittersweet victory of Marcy               Carmichael                                      Questions        1. How does the episode of Woolf's character reading the work of Mary Carmichael recapitulate some of the themes of the prior chapter? All 2. What might be the reason why  Woolf creates a fictional author named Mary Carmichael? Margi 3. Woolf's character reflects, "...determined to do my duty by her as a reader if she would do her duty by me as a writer, I turned the page and read." What does she mean by the duty of the reader and the writer respectively? Ben 4. The sentence in Mary Carmichael's book "Cloe liked Olivia" led Woolf character to reflect upon what aspect of the relationship between women and fiction in the past? Viola 5. As Woolf's character read on, she began to appreciate more and more the work Carmichael has written, but she then stops to reflect, "I had slipped unthinkingly into praise of my own sex." Why is the problematic? Supposing that there is a well established tradition of writing by women, what appears to be the next great difficulty? (How was this same problem raised in the prior chapters?) Sara 6. What does Woolf's character mean when she says, "[but] we should wrong these illustrious men [Johnson, Goethe, & Co.] if we insisted that they got nothing from these alliances [with the opposite sex] but comfort, flattery and the pleasures of the body" (P.86 Harcourt edition)? ( Also place this in context of prior chapters.) Jorik 7. What is in a way "tragic" about the episode where Woolf's character imagines asking a respectable middle-aged woman crossing the street with her daughter what she did in her life that was meaningful? (How is this idea reflected in the work of Woolf herself?) Daniel 8. Why, according to Woolf's character, is Mary Carmichael's victory, as one might put it, 'bittersweet'? In what why has Carmichael surpassed her predecessors? In what way is she still "failing"? Can her failure nonetheless still be considered a success? in what ways? (Is Woolf's character reading Carmichael as "the last volume in a fairly long series" "fair" to Carmichael?) Reina