REVISITING "THE WOMAN QUESTION"

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941)
A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN (1929)

I: INTRODUCTION
--Woolf, Eliot (1888-1965), Tradition?
--Genre=Hybrid. Lecture? Treatise? Essay? Fiction?
--Talk given at Newnham College , Cambridge (establ. 1876); and at "Odtaa," an elite literary society at Girton College, Cambridge (establ. 1873/originally 1869 at Hitchin, but moved).
--Beginning with "But"
-- Women and fiction: what produces the differences between men's and women's writing?
--Answer: "A woman must have..."

II: ISSUES
--DAUGHTERS AS OUTSIDERS WHO TRESPASS
2093/2155--the thought-fish and the Beadle
2094/2156--the library and the guardian angel
2098/2159, 2099/2161, 2103/2165--locked out or locked in?

--MATERIALS AND MATERIALITY
2111/2172--£500 and a room vs. the vote
2322/2398--T. S. Eliot's "chamber"
2113/2174--the spider's web
2130/2192--skewing the web

--RECOVERING A FEMALE LITERARY TRADITION
2131/2193--the dangers of a new tradition
2116+2125/2177+2187--Aphra Behn and Judith Shakespeare
(Beware! See Prof. Catharine Grays' book, Women Writers and Public Debate in Seventeenth-Century Britain)

--ANDROGYNY: man-womanly, woman-manly 2143/2205
1. the problem of fixed terms
2. the problem of indistinguishable sexes
3. rather post-gender androgynous ethical competence (see Professor Lauren Goodlad's article in Victorian Studies)

--THE PERORATION (conclusion)
2150/2212 "Do not dream of influencing other people ... Think of things in themselves" vs. women's "secret influence" (1584/1722--Sarah Stickney Ellis).

2151/2214: The combined intellectual effort of each woman (individual: free, courageous, thinking independently) will produce the milieu (community) out of which great female works of art can grow.