A Room of One's Own

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

As Virginia Woolf's most powerful and pioneer feminist essay, A Room of One's Own focuses on the subject going on over the centuries: woman and literature. In the book, based on a lecture given at Girton College, Woolf lays emphasis on the male-dominated literary world and invites both women and men to consider upon this inequality. Why is there no genius like Shakespeare among the women? Why do we not see female authors as much as male authors? Why can't women become free?

All in all, Woolf puts forward this thesis which has become a principle even in our days: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”