...a way of seeing beyond inner and outer.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Room

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. "It's something Virginia Woolf said in a series of lectures that eventually became the essay A Room of One's Own.  Her subject was women and fiction, narrow compared to the lives we all maneuver through, sometime gracefully sometimes rolling down the stairs knock knee'd and banged elbowed, but the thought behind the words could be said more catholically.  A woman must have space of her own if she is to create her own reality.
Later, in the same paragraph, Woolf says,   "Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial — and any question about sex is that — one cannot hope to tell the truth."
I disagree.  The truth is, there are more women who would like a room of their own than can afford the luxury of one.  I would bet my Juliet jar on it and I get a little cranked of thinking about why women are so willing to give up their own personal space.  Sure we have "the house", but it's a communal space. It's everyone's space. This feels like it sound greedy, but I'm going to tell my truth. I would like a room of my own,  a place to create and laze, to work and to plan, to dream and to think. Until I have a room of my own, I'm settling for a space of my own; my desk, cluttered and chaotically covered in the goings on of my day.  

2 comments:

  1. I hadn't really thought about it but it is true! Men have their man caves-- there is even a show about all the converting of basements and garages going on-- women should have their own space too and not have to wait till a child moves out-- why can't a women have a converted garage? Oh yeah-- everyone assumes the kitchen is our space...

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  2. I've seen that program, I think. When the girls were at home, I used to put a post it on the inside of my patio door that said,"Whatever you want, no now, maybe later. You bother me now, it's no now and no later." Then I'd go sit outside on the patio.

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