Virginia Wolf asked Room 1 to imagine Shakespeare's sister, Judith. She said she would have been brought up as a domestic girl around the house. Would have run away from her loving parents' organisation of an arranged marriage for her and tried to get work in London. But was seduced by first theatre manager who came her way - he made her pregnant then she killed herself at the crossroads. It partly gives a tragic account of the destiny of women at that time 'who didn't have the freedom and the opportunities and the independence of men' And it comes back at the very end of the essay as a kind of utopian wish fulfilment fantasy,. whereby Judith Shakespeare could return if the women of
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Virginia Woolf's highly influential essay on women and literature, which considers both literary history and future opportunity.
In 1928 Woolf gave two lectures at Cambridge University about women and fiction. In front of an audience at Newnham College, she delivered the following words: “All I could do was offer you an opinion upon one minor point - a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved”.
These lectures formed the basis of a book she published the following year, and Woolf chose A Room Of One’s Own for its title. It is a text that set the scene for the study of women’s writing for the rest of the 20th century. Arguably, it initiated the discipline of women’s history too.
With
Hermione Lee
Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
Michele Barrett
Emeritus Professor of Modern Literary and Cultural Theory at Queen Mary, University of London
and
Alexandra Harris
Professor of English at the University of Birmingham
Producer Luke Mulhall