Virginia Woolf's ambitious work, A Room of One's Own, addresses many important questions regarding the history and culture of women's writing and attempts to document the conditions in which women had to endure in order to write, juxtaposing them with his vision of the ideal conditions for literary creation. Woolf's long essay has endured and proven itself to be a pioneering and viable feminist work, but the wide range of ideas and arguments Woolf explores leaves her article open to criticism on certain concepts that seem to contradict each other. This observation can be explained very satisfactorily by the critic Ellen Bayuk Rosenman, who states that "the essay does not aim at the strict coherence of a puzzle composed of perfectly interlocking pieces in which there is no space and where there is nothing remains...Woolf's essay has proven so enduring because it often contradicts itself" (13). Woolf advances the idea at the end of her essay that the "androgynous mind" must be l the apotheosis of all perspectives of writing Yet this belief she conveys not only contradicts the earlier evidence she expressed, but also diminishes the woman's value as a significant contributor to the world of literature and discredits woman's ability to write as she attempts to praise and inspire us plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayVirginia Woolf uses A. Room of One's Own as a platform to discuss past and current social inequalities that exist in the field of women and literature, attempting to document the negative effects that the patriarchal society of early 20th century England caused on the female psyche. From her analysis of these issues and her own life experiences, Woolf arrives at the conclusion which becomes the basis of this essay, stating: "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction » (2154). Taken literally, this statement seems rather uncontroversial and quite obvious. However, this assumption of Woolf's is based less on the physical environment and more on the psychological changes she hopes to bring about by granting women the freedom of these two possessions. Woolf's essay is based on the fact that women today are oppressed, mistreated, barred from working in certain fields, and in general have not earned the respect of their male counterparts as as intellectuals and authors; these injustices produce in a woman a certain bitterness and a certain skepticism which distorts her vision of the world and its possibilities. This argument is illustrated when Woolf discusses the obstacles that women authors such as Jane Austen faced, describing: "What genius, what integrity was required to face all this criticism, in the midst of this purely patriarchal, to hold on. to the thing as they saw it without retreating" (2193). She reserves the highest praise for Austen for her ability to compartmentalize her anger and bitterness in the face of the circumstances that her sex and the other have imposed on her. Of course , Woolf does not believe she admires Austen for this quality, but rather for her complete lack of rage in the first place. She reflects on this idea, noting "perhaps it was Jane Austen's nature not to want what she did. 'she didn't have. His gift and his situation were a perfect match. But I doubt that this is true of Charlotte Brontë..."(2189). It is a wonderful quality of Jane Austen that she is able to rise above the prejudices that have been inflicted on her, as well as to all women, but this abilityis it the only path to meaningful writing? Does Woolf really mean that Jane Austen's writing is better than Charlotte Brontë's simply because this female perspective is somehow obscured, more subtle than in Brontë's works? Rosenman illuminates this dilemma when she says: “How do we judge the works of the women writers Woolf speaks of, almost all of whom express anger at their plight? Are they all “doomed to death”, incapable of “growing in the minds of others” as Woolf claims? only Jane Austen survived? (105) While Woolf praises Austen, she discredits women who strive to write from their point of view, to faithfully document their "plight," to reflect life as they know it . This criticism of Woolf becomes all the more ambiguous in light of her beautiful and inspiring words: “No need to hurry. No need to shine. No need to be anyone other than yourself” (2189). Is Woolf suggesting that all of our experiences, torments, and struggles do not combine to create our true self? If indeed gender is a social construction, as Woolf thinks, this does not change the fact that this construction exists and colors our perceptions of the world. It is a noble idea to hope that women will be able to ignore their earthly condition, but it is a very narrow view of what inspires great literature, and one of the many victims of this belief is the faction writers who believe their real selves are a combination of all the anger, bitterness, and other emotions women feel throughout their lives. Woolf clings to the idea that Charlotte Brontë's resentment of the chains that bound her, both in her life and in her literature, prohibits her from writing consciously, and thus cheapens the value and message of her work. A manifestation of this attitude appears when Woolf discusses Brontë's work and says: "If one reads them again and notices this shock, this indignation, one sees that it will never express his genius as a whole. His books will be distorted. and twisted. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly” (2190). The validity of this view has not often been challenged and, without further thought, it seems that this wound on Bronte's shoulder ruins his otherwise brilliant work. However, Rosenman offers another, perhaps more accurate, interpretation of Bronte's tirade against patriarchal society through the eyes of Jane Eyre, when she relates: "Rather than being just technical flaws, they may be -also be gateways to a typically feminine point of view. » (108). If this statement is indeed true, if Charlotte Brontë was simply trying to expose the feminine side in her writing, how can this conflict with Woolf's admiration for Austen and Emily Brontë, who she claims are the only women to “write as women”. write" (2193). Who is Virginia Woolf to judge what writing is purely feminine but not jaded at the same time? Woolf seems to be at odds with her own view of quality writing, and her conflicting views on the female perspective that pervades women's literature leaves the reader in a state of flux, wondering whether Woolf is calling on women to write as if the construct of gender never existed, or to bask in their femininity and flaunt it. in all its glory Without doubt, the most radical concept that Woolf struggles with in A Room of One's Own, the idea of ​​androgyny as the highest form of consciousness, blurs her exaltation of women and calls into question the status of this work as part of Woolf's progressive feminism., 1999.