BOOKS: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


 



Main Idea:  In order to write fiction, women must have money and rooms of their own.  This will help give them a bit of time and space to think, dream and write.
 
Favorite Quote:  "I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else.  Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted.  Think of things in themselves."

Thoughts:  This awesome little book was based on some lectures she gave in 1928.  Wouldn't it have been fun to have been able to attend one?   I wonder:   Was she was as good of a speaker as she was a writer? 

There was a small section that really interested me.   She wrote a bit on the differences in the poetry before and after World War I.   She mentioned that the war tore apart the illusions of the romantic view on life and that the underlying music of everyday life changed forever.  

She wrote, "  The very reason why the poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now.  But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment.  One does not recognize it in the first place; often for the reason one fears it;  one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew."

Doesn't that just resonate with the before and after of any personal traumatic event?   This vivid description applies to both personal and communal traumatic events.   World War I fascinates me because it completely destroyed a way of life and set in motion the events that led to the modern era.   Romanticism died during the war and a cold, depressing realism took over.  

In this book, Virginia Woolf asks "Shall we lay the blame on the war?"  Then, she has a nifty paragraph asking if "blame" was the right word.  She asks, "Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place?"  Isn't that a good question?  Romanticism may be stirring and fun and invoke powerful feelings of pride and glory.  But Truth comes back to remind one that it is all Illusion.   War is not a glorious adventure.  It is a tremendously horrid tragedy that may be necessary at times.   

There are so many lessons to be learned from the two World Wars. One lesson was about war in general.  War is horrid and should not be entered into lightly. World War I taught us to not be so eager to jump into an unnecessary war.   The death and destruction was overwhelmingly immense.   Yet, World War II taught us to not be so eager to avoid a necessary war.  The death and destruction was even more overwhelming and immense. 

However, the greatest lesson was learning how quickly we can shed civilized behavior and descend into chaos and unimagined brutality.  Decent people became nightmarish savages. Civilization keeps us in check but it can be ripped away so easily.   As Anne Perry wrote:  "We must grasp civilization...., pay any price to keep it for ourselves and those who come after us.  Guard the gates of sanity so madness does not return."   




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