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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcvb4HPOcwk

This was a video review of AROO and talked about some of the themes of the book (as expected). The person did bring some new ideas to the table, the most thought provoking one being the question of to what extent is it still true that writers and other artists need a room of their own and sufficient means with which to support themselves? The thinking behind this is the idea that many writers and artists go through a period in life of essentially starving and living close to the earth, yet at the same time those artists often come from lives of privilege and education, so they can choose these lives of self-imposed poverty to be an artist. I agree with this concept, though I do think that it isn't as much of a limitation as it used to be. Especially with a lot of the social help in the developed nations, there are a lot more opportunities to be in that poverty state and then rise up as a prominent artist than there used to be, and I think it only keeps expanding from there. However, that does raise the question of if it is getting easier to get out of poverty as an artist, does that mean that the whole 'suffering stage' in an artists life means less? Of course, not that every artist goes through that stage in their life, but from the video, it made it seem like it happens pretty often. Perhaps it is just a way of saying that the artist gets their 'creative juices flowing' in that sort of 'suffering stage.' I just think that while it still may be true that the artist must have some means to support themselves in order to safely go through that 'poverty stage' in their life, I do think it means less to do that now than it used to, since either more people are privileged enough in order to be able to do that, or it has become easier to make that leap from poverty as an artist in this day and age.

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93184407

This article talked about how Virginia Woolf was one of the first major authors to stop considering the mind as a static thing but instead think about how the mind worked and the various sensations that it received, prompting her to create the minds of characters like Mrs. Dalloway. It made her wonder how she even made up these minds and also how we all make up our own minds, coming up with her own theory of the mind. The most interesting thing about the ideas presented in this theory is the idea that the mind is constantly going, moving from one thing to the next, but yet there was some way that the mind was bound together. Woolf proposed the idea of the self as the source of identity that ties all the fragments of the mind together. The self is ultimately who we tell the stories of our experiences to, for we need a subject for the sensation and perceptions that we have of the world around us. For me, this seems like a very deep philosophical discussion waiting to happen, and it even reminds me a bit of the famous line "I think, therefore I am" by Descartes, revolving around the idea that because I am aware of things, I exist, even if the physical reality might not be true. Woolf seems to be going along similar lines, thinking in the context of forming characters in her book by trying to understand how real life minds of people work. This led to Woolf creating characters from the inside out rather than from the outside in, a pretty new concept at the time of her writings. I was actually a bit surprised by the fact that such an article existed, because I didn't really think of Woolf as a philosopher, pondering these sorts of topics, but it certainly did seem to help her understand her own self and her writing better.

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http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/woolf-room.html

This was a short article/review on AROO and what ideas it had. The majority of it was just a summary with some unique thoughts sprinkled in, but the part that I found interesting was towards the end, where the article brings up the fact that Woolf didn't really address the fact that in some cases, despite lacking means and intellectual freedom, men succeeded in places where women failed. It goes on to say that perhaps it just lies in the genius of the writer itself, for Jane Austen was far greater than George Sand. I found this intriguing, because I imagined the ways Woolf might argue this point, the fact that men succeeded even when women didn't, with the fact that men were more inclined more to write than women, that they were given a bit more freedom than women who suffered similar setbacks since society naturally restricted men less. I don't have nearly as much knowledge on the subject to make a definitive argument or case, of course. However, it was insightful to me that the article mentions the fact that Woolf never mentions this sort of discrepancy. Perhaps it may have just been to avoid weakening the point, though there may be something else there that I am missing.

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Scholarly physical source from the library

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Scholarly physical source from the library

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[Regarding A Room of One's Own:] "The lecturer's 'I' appears on every page, almost in every sentence; and with that 'I' her personal interests and preoccupations, and as she herself suggests, her limitations, prejudices, and idiosyncrasies." (p. 168)

"Virginia Woolf and Her Works" by Jean Guiguet, published 1976

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Scholarly Online Source from library database

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Scholarly Online Source from library database

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"When Woolf wonders, 'But what about my civilisation,' urges readers never to cease asking 'what is this 'civilization' in which we find ourselves,' or pictures women entering the professions as 'explorers who set out in crazy cockle shells to discover new lands, and found new civilisations,' the word registers the critical and visionary usages of her moment and milieu."

"Civilization and 'my civilisation': Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde" by Christine Froula, copyright 2012

Link

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Why common reading at LMC? What is your take?

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Why common reading at LMC? What is your take?

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I think that AROO was common reading this year at LeMoyne because it made people more aware of some of the issues that people face in life. Though personally I felt that I did not get too much out of the text, I can see how others could get a lot. It did make me more aware of some of the struggles that women went through in the past, and even the today, so perhaps it was all about raising that awareness of the issues. College is typically a more progressive place than the rest of society,  so an emphasis on these sorts of issues definitely fits. I think Virginia Woolf is also an author that perhaps not a lot of people know about (I didn't until this summer), so it was a way to expose incoming students to new ideas from new people, as a sort of introduction to more openness to these new experiences. With that comes perhaps a lot of ideas that might be controversial, and may not agree with everyone's worldview, promoting further discourse about the issue, especially at LeMoyne, where those sorts of things are really valued. The common reading is also a way for everyone to have some common ground coming into the new school, a sense of connection with everyone in the class, whether it be because a particular student found it interesting or found it extremely boring.
Ultimately, AROO was the common reading this year is because it brought new ideas to the table and promoted discussion. It was a way of introduction to college, a place where ideas can be shared and discussed, a place where new experiences can be had, and a place where different perspectives come together. For that, ultimately, is how we learn.

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I remember that before reading AROO, I either read or heard that the book is regarded by some as a major feminist text, and I was a bit freaked out, since I was thinking of perhaps a more extreme feminism, with the whole 'women must rise above men' feeling. However, in reading it, AROO seemed to be more of a commentary on how women were viewed throughout history, the challenges they faced in creating literature, and a call for women to keep on writing as so few have done in the past. It didn't really seem to me like a stereotypical feminist essay. I had half expected Woolf to violently condemn all the horrible things men had done to repress women, but that wasn't the case once I really started reading. Instead it became more of a history lesson, vaguely tracing out the timeline of women in relation to literature and fiction. While informing, it was a bit hard to follow (as mentioned earlier) and lackluster for me. AROO had good points and seemed to be pretty accurate, but for me, the overall message fell flat. The overarching, general idea that I got out of it was that 'women have had trouble in literature in the past, but now is the time to change that.' It was more like a cliche inspirational message than anything else: 'We may have lost in the past, but now we need to work to win.' It could be that I'm just not fully aware of what it all means since I am a man, and I don't have the hardships that women do in day to day life, but that doesn't change the fact that I feel like I didn't get much out of it, or at least perhaps that I'm missing some of the main ideas or points. For me, the book took a long time to say something very general, and that makes for a mediocre personal experience.

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After I read through the book, I took a step back and tried to see what we might've learned from the book, since when I finished, I wasn't completely sure what I had just read. However, once I looked back at some of my notes, I realized that I had never quite been aware of why women literature wasn't common until recently. Of course, I had the vague sense that 'women couldn't get an education and were repressed' from history class, since that is a common theme throughout history. But I didn't realize how much the actual title, "A Room of One's Own," meant in terms of women and literature. That was one of the things that stood out, that earlier on, women would much more often write novels early on, since they lent themselves more easily to constantly getting up and doing things around the house. Women simply didn't have the freedom to just sit down with some peace and quiet to write poetry, and I had never really been conscious of that fact. Due to the role women played in earlier society, and even to some extent the role they are expected to play today, poetry simply isn't that common. Women needed to be on call for anything in the house, be it kids or housework. The reasoning goes so much more in depth than just "women weren't allowed to do certain things." It was in the nature of their gender role that really prohibited them writing certain kinds of literature, and Virginia Woolf made me aware of that. It's those sorts of specific explanations that I enjoy so much more than just the overarching, general ones.

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"A Room of One's Own," (AROO) for me, was pretty hard to read and get through. Personally, I enjoy having a story or plot line to follow from chapter to chapter, since it makes the reading a bit more comprehensible to me. While AROO certainly did have the whole theme of 'women and fiction,' going between chapters was difficult, since I could never clearly see the common thread that tied it all together. At times it seemed like Virginia Woolf was just jumping from one idea to the next with only the vague connection of women in literature or something similar. AROO did point out some things that I perhaps wasn't readily aware of, but the way it was structured made it a bit harder for me to really pick those things out.