A Room of One's Own, Questions Chapter 6

 Chapter Six

 

The Androgynous Mind / Women &  Fiction 
  / Conclusion

          Attention on London 
      1. recapitulation: the stream, the taxi-cab
      2. Unity of the Mind
      3. Coleridge and "the androgynous mind"
      4. Criticism of Mr.A's treatment of an intimate scene
      5. mention of the Italian Futurists
      6. Mary Beaton arrives at an explicit thesis for her 
          article or speech on Women and Fiction
      7. Two Criticisms anticipated
      8.  The Idea of Reality,  The function of literature 
           and Things in themselves
      9. Conclusion

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                          Questions

1. What is Mary Beaton's interpretation of Coleridge's theory of the androgynous mind? Daniel

2. What is Mary Beaton's main complaint about Mr.A's treatment of a scene of intimacy between Alan and Phoebe? Viola

3. What is Mary Beaton's explicit thesis for her article or speech on the topic of "Women and Fiction"? Jorik

4. What does Virginia Woolf mean when she says, "for in a question like this truth is only to be had by laying together many varieties of error"? Reina

5. Is Woolf contradicting herself? She writes, Sara

         All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this  
         claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the 
         private-school stage of human existence where there are "sides," and 
         it is necessary for one side to be another...Praise and blame and alike
         mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is 
         the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of 
         the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write 
         what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters 
         for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. 

In the prior chapter, she had Mary Beat reflect,

        There is no mark on the wall to measure the precise height of women. 
        There are no yard measures, neatly divided into the fractions of an inch, 
        that one can lay against the qualities of a good mother or the devotion of 
        a daughter, or the fidelity of a sister, or the capacity of a house-keeper. 
        Few women even now have been graded at the universities; the great 
        trials of the professions, army and navy, trade, politics and diplomacy 
        have hardly tested them. They remain even at this moment almost 
        unclassified. (P.85)

6. What are the two criticisms Woolf anticipates at the end of the chapter? Margi

7. For Woolf, what is the use or function of literature such as Lear, Emma, or La Recherche du Temps Perdu? Ben

Woolf on Austen

 

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

A Room of One's Own, Questions Chapter 4

 Chapter Four

Woman and Novel Writing:                  Building  a tradition           At the Home Library Again          1. the work of Lady Winchilsea         2. the letters of Dorothy Osborne         3. the significance of Aphra Behn         4. women and novel writing         5. Austen and Bronte compared         6. On Novel Writing: Integrity and Genius               [Ethics and Aesthetics again]         7. Fiction & a Theory of Values: a Voice              of One's Own         8. Imitation: the Sentence

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Discussion  Questions


1. What might Woolf mean when she writes, "money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for" ? How might this relate to the title of this book?    Margi

2. Woolf's character reflects: "The strange thing is, I thought, turning over the pages of Dorothy's letters, what a gift that untaught and solitary girl had for the framing of a sentence, for the fashioning of the scene." If you are inclined to agree with Woolf's assessment, find a discuss a passage from Dorothy Osborne in the quoted text which might support her appropriate appraisal.
Sara

3. What are the main reasons provided by Woolf's character for admiring Jane Austen? Daniel

4. What is the main criticism from Woolf's character for the work of Lady Winchilsea? Jorik

5. What does Woolf's character find strange in thinking about George Eliot, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters? Viola

6. What is the relation between, women, writing, the middle-class and novels? Ben

7. Woolf wrote: 

           "For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are 
           the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking 
           by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass 
           is behind the single voice."

What might Woolf mean by this? How might this be related to some of the themes we have discussed in the previous chapters? Reina

8. In comparing Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, what does she criticize Charlotte Bronte for and what does she admire Jane Austen for? Ben

9. What does Woolf's character discover in comparing the life of George Eliot with a life like that of Tolstoi? Margi

10. In Woolf's character loose sketch of an aesthetic theory, what does she mean by the "integrity" of the artist? Daniel

11.  What is essence of the art of writing? What does this have to do with the writing of women?

Reina

12. What is the fundamental difference between men and women according to Woolf?  What would it mean for women writers to have a tradition of their own? Jorik

13. What does Woolf's character think writing is about? How is the accessibility of literature and the formation of the English sentence related to "the freedom of the mind"? Where it would seem, does individuality begin? Viola

14. What is Woolf's character's fundamental criticism of women writers in the past? Sara

15. Woolf's character singles out this following sentence as a man's:

     "The grandeur of their works was an argument with them, not to stop short,  
     but to proceed. The could have no higher excitement or satisfaction than      

  in the exercise of their art and endless generations of truth and beauty. 
  Success prompts to exertion; and habit facilitates success."

Woolf's character finds Dr. Johnson and  Gibbon behind this. Do you agree? Do a style analysis. Compare this sentence with Austen or Burney or even Eliot. Could there be such a thing as "a woman's sentence" as Woolf's character seems to suggest? All

A Room of One's Own, Questions Chapter 3

 

Chapter Three

 

Roughly....

On the relation between Truth & Fact 
in Fiction: Limits and the unimaginable

            At the Library: The Topics/ Themes [?]
        1. Ask the historian: condition of 
             women in the time of Elizabeth
        2. Woman in Fiction: the composite being
        3. are there women 'writers' in the past?/
            women in history (the margins)
        4. history and fiction: the imagination
        5. the Bishop and Judith: What is genius?
             [Is a female genius imaginable?]
             (The use of fiction and literature)
         6. the second meaning of a room 
         7. issue of chasity: Anon
         8. Art and Circumstance: the origin of art
               (the mirror speaks the truth)
          9. Art & Politics: Issue of self-denigration, 
                Responsibility & Truth (Art and Life)
                                                                   
                [What is a true work of Art?]

---

---

    Discussion  Questions

Section I: Fiction and History

1. What task does Woolf's character set for herself at the beginning of the chapter in reading Trevelyan’s History of England? What does she discover about the relationship between writing  fiction and history? 

a) Is the following analogy a good one: history is concerned with facts while fiction is concerned with values? Where does this analogy break down? 

b) What is truth in history? What is truth in fiction? What is the relation between fact, values and reality in fiction? Does the writing of history and the writing of fiction serve different social functions? In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they different?

c)  Is there a way in which fiction and history might be complimentary to each other? In thinking about their relationship, does it challenge our notion 
of Truth? Does this lead us to an idea of the social function of fiction? What role does the imagination have in all this? 

2. Woolf writes: 

     Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind 
     whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it.

What does this tell us about what she thinks about the origin of art? What does this have to do with history? What does this have to do with Woolf’s character’s professed topic: ‘women and fiction’? Is this somehow related to her theory of genius?

3. Woolf’s character reflects: 

     It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think, suggested who made 
     the ballads and the folk-songs, crooning them to her children, 
     beguiling her spinning with them, or the length of the winter’s night. 

How does this provide insight into how history might be written in time to come? What is the relationship between history, fiction and the imagination? What does this have to do with facts and what might this suggest about how history is written? What are ‘facts’? Are 'meanings' (of words or events) facts? What is the (social) function of fiction?


Section II: Women and Society

1. Why does Woolf call women a "composite being"? What does she mean?

2. What is Woolf’s character’s objection to Lady Bessborough in the latter’s correspondence with Lord Granville Leveson-Gower? How does this relate to Mr. Oscar Browning, the Saturday Review and Mr. Greg? What seems to be Woolf view on the relationship between art and politics?

3. Opening a book about music, Woolf’s character finds, 

      Of Mlle. Germaine Tailleferre one can only repeat Dr. Johnson’s dictum 
      concerning a woman preacher, transposed into terms of music. 
      ‘Sir, a woman’s composing is a like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. 
       It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.’ So accurately 
       does history repeat itself. 

Why is this important? What does Woolf hope to show by citing his example?

4. Is Woolf a polemicist? How so or why not? (Also think about how this is related to Lady Bessborough, female authors who take up male pseudo names, and the Bishop.)  

5. Is Virginia Woolf a 'feminist'? If so, in what ways?


Section III: The Main Thread

1. What eventually happened with Judith in Woolf’s character’s story? How is this related to the theme of chastity and the theme of courage and confidence? Is self-confidence an issue in the pieces we have read from Woolf so far? How so? What does all this have to do with talk of conditions and history, even society? 

2. As discussed, what is the second meaning of 'room' in Woolf's metaphor 'a room of one's own? How does this issue arise in this chapter?

3. In “Professions for Women”, Woolf writes: 
      
      You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned 
      by men. You are able, though not without great labor and effort, to pay 
      the rent. You are earning your five hundred pounds a year. But this freedom 
      is only a beginning; the room is your own, but it is still bare. It has 
      to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be shared. How are you 
      going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you 
      going to share it, and upon what terms? 

Is there a connection between what she has stated here and the contents of this chapter? Is this related to the end of chapter two where she talks about 'the protected' sex--perhaps also think of Lady Bessborough--and Fernham?

4. What is the connection between Woolf’s character’s description of Mr. Oscar Browning, the description of the worm (P.44, ch.3), the image of Prometheus (P.38, ch.2) and the looking-glasses passage (P.35, ch.2)? Does the description of Mr. Oscar Browning have anything to do with what she says in the following, “For if she [woman] begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness or life is diminished” (P.36, ch.2)?

5. Woolf writes: 

     The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more 
      interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

How is this consistent with what she learns from the Professor X episode in Chapter 2 and what she says in Chapter 1? (see below)

     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 how one 
     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. 
     Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fiction.

Explain.

Section IV: Women and the Literary Cannon: Towards a Theory of Art

1. Woolf's character alludes to Thomas Gray's Elegy and substitutes Jane Austen for John Milton: 

      ...I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, 
      of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen...

Why is this allusion significant, if at all? Is it fitting in the context of this book and in terms of the task she has been burdened with, as she tells us?

2. Have your heard the phrase 'a genius gives birth to a work to a work of art'? how is Woolf's use of this idiom appropriate given her theme 'women and fiction'? Do you think Woolf over-states her point? Why or why not? What do you think Woolf means by 'genius'?

3. Earlier in the chapter she writes: 

      What were the conditions in which women lives, I asked myself; for fiction, 
      imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, 
      as science may be; fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly   
      perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."****

Later we find: 

      Chastity had then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman's 
      life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it 
      free and bring it to light of day demands courage of the rarest. 

α) What is the relationship between these two passages? 

b) What does the issue of chastity have to do with publishing anonymously? What does this have to do with the task she takes up in chapter one, namely 'women and fiction'? Is there a relationship between art and politics?

c) What kind of courage is she referring to? Does this have anything to do with the theme of chastity?

(Note: Think about the function of the story about Judith in this chapter in relation to history and fiction. What do social conditions and history have to do with this?)

4. Woolf's objection to the Bishop is not only to what might be meant by his assertion that "it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare's day should have had Shakespeare's genius" but also to our notion of genius and what the word means. In the context of this chapter, what are the several senses of the word 'genius'?*** How has Woolf challenged our notion of genius? (Who, what and when do we consider someone or something, a genius or a work of genius?)  What might we mean by genius? Is there just one meaning of the term?

5. What is the function of fiction? How might fiction be said to enrich our lives? How might ethics be related to aesthetics, i.e. fiction? How is this related to the theme of courage?

Themes

 Themes

Fact vs Fiction (as the best means of conveying the truth)

(Women as the) Object vs the Reality

Having a living vs Making a living

Professor X vs Women

Past vs Present (future unknown)

Modernism vs Edwardian (Victorian)

Current Interpretations and References

 

bluestockings

 

A Room of One's Own, Questions Chapter 2

Chapter Two   Roughly....                 The Episodes                1. Introduction                2. The British Museum/ library                3. The student                4. The caricature of Professor von X                5. Lunch                6. The purse                7. The Admiralty Arch/ return home Questions 1. At the beginning of this chapter, Woolf's character has evidently made little progress with the task she has been burdened with. Acknowledging this failing, she heads towards the British Museum in London under what presumption?  2. Describe the ironic aspect in Woolf's description of the dome at the British Museum. 3. What is so special about her caricature of Professor von X? Why was she doodling in the first place? What did she learn from this experience? 3(ish) Who or what is "the most discussed animal in the universe"? Who is doing the discussing and why? What do they say? 4. Why is Woolf's character intimidated by the student sitting next to her? Bonus: (Why does the character consult the letter M?) 5. During the lunch episode, Woolf's character reflects: "If he had written dispassionately about women, had used indisputable proofs to establish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing that the result should be one thing rather than another, one would not have been angry either." How does this relate to the question she has been pursuing? 6. During the lunch episode, what did Woolf's character realize that was the first step towards abating her anger? Why is this important? How does this related to Professor von X? 7. Woolf's character reflects: "Life for both sexes--and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement--is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle." a) What "illusion" is Woolf's character referring to? What does this have to do with self-confidence? How is this theme further developed with the image of the looking-glass?How does this reflect the relationship between men and women? How does the character seem to feel about these issues? b) Explain how the theme of self-confidence is treated here. 8. In the purse episode, Woolf's main character had the occasion to reflect upon her past life as opposed to her present conditions.  a) What conclusion does she arrive at and how did she arrive at this conclusion? (Does the conclusion have anything to do with the title of the book and the cumbersome task or "burden" assigned to her? ) b) Why does isn't the vote as important to her? What do you think about that; is it a condition of her time, her position? Explain. 9. There are two descriptions of the city of London in this chapter.  a) The second description of London seems to connect with the theme of 'instincts,' explain.   b) Compare and contrast the two descriptions of the city. c) A literary allusion is made: what is it to? How is it related to the image of the city?  10. How does the ending of this chapter reflect the character development in this chapter? What is her big realization towards the end? (borrowed and ever so slightly adapted)

A Room of One's Own, Questions Chapter 1

 Chapter One

 

Questions

1. What is the task that has been set for Woolf? Why does she find this task particularly difficult? Why does Woolf feel that she can only offer her "opinion" on the matter of "women and fiction"? 

2. Why does Woolf propose to offer her audience a story rather than a lecture? Is her choice of form fitting? According to Woolf, how does one find truth in fiction? 

3. How might the chapel episode be related to the title of the book and the other episodes?

4. How is the luncheon episode related to Woolf's thoughts on fiction?

5. Woolf once wrote of the Victorian Era, 

          Ivy grew in unparalleled profusion. Houses that had been bare stone        
          were smothered in greenery...And just as the ivy and the evergreen 
          rioted in the damp earth outside, so did the same fertility show itself   
          within. The life of the average woman was a succession of childbirths.

What does this have to do with Mrs. Seton?

6.  What (social) issue(s) are raised in the dinner episode, further developed in conversation with Mary about Fernham, and in relating of the brief history of Mrs. Seton? How does this relate to the title of the book?

7. List the main themes of this chapter. 

8. What is the relationship between fiction and fact for Woolf?

(borrowed and ever so slightly adapted)

An Introduction