Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

It was a small but interesting read. It was my first book from Virginia Woolf and I have to say it was inspiring. It is curious to see how storytelling is such an easy thing to do but the act of writing in itself turns something so beautiful into an objectifying topic.

The author does an amazing job describing how the different writers behave not only taking their sex into account but the time period and the probability of their status quo in the society. She illustrates possible lives of women who wrote their novels and helps us, the reader, visualize their hardships. I remember from when I was in English Literature A level we discussed how the time period really affected the writers but I think this book opened my eyes to a new degree. I remember studying Margaret Atwood and F.Scott Fitzgerald but these were women from the beginning. They are women who were not allowed to even have a space for themselves to write like their husbands or male family members had in their offices or private spaces. They had one room, many interruptions and yet they managed to write.

Somehow writing this review now is making me think how many of these little moments they tried to claw with their nails and teeth and how now, we have the time but some just don’t use it. I realized that and I went back to writing. It made me feel proud over the journey that women passed, how writing is now something that everyone can do no matter who they are. No more need to hide behind an Anonymous and a freedom to write about everything or nothing at all, from pure facts to pure imaginary bliss.

This book identifies the main needs for a woman to write, a room for herself, a way to pay for her living and herself. Even though it sounds so simplistic it’s so incredible to see how brilliant women went without all of them or maybe just one thing and they left behind books that till this day are read and re-read.