Virginia Woolf is known for her contributions to feminist literature as well as her lesbian relationship with Vita Sackville-West. She has written many famous essays and novels, including her provocative magical realism novel Orlando, which chronologizes the life of an immortal gender-fluid writer throughout British history. In her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf writes about the conditions necessary to create works of art. ,
In this essay, Woolf is specifically concerned with why there have been so few women writers throughout history. According to Virginia Woolf, it is not, as some men of the time suggested, because women lacked talent or intellect, but because they lacked the material resources needed to create, specifically a steady income and a physical space to create in — a room of one’s own.
Creation requires a certain amount of leisure time. It is often when the mind is most at rest that it is able to be the most creative. According to romantic poet William Wordsworth poetry is “intense emotions recollected in tranquility”. Other types of art are much the same. Extreme conditions and traumatic experiences can inspire beautiful creations, but tranquility is needed to turn that experience into something to share with others. Leisure time is required — time that is not only free of hard work, but also free of worry and distress.
Productivity is highly valued in our modern society. We are addicted to being busy and constantly producing “results”. We have apps to track our “progress” and surveys to compare our stats. This constant need to be moving and doing as if one were a machine can be detrimental to anyone’s mental health, but it is especially detrimental to creation.
Creativity is not the same thing as productivity. Both require mental, emotional, and physical energy and self-discipline, but while productivity is about what a person does, creativity is about who a person is. Creativity cannot be manufactured. It cannot be reduced to a formula or measured on a chart. It cannot be replicated with AI nor can it ever be guaranteed. One might be able to force oneself to be productive despite poor energy levels, but one cannot force oneself to be creative. When the well is empty ideas become stagnant.
Creativity requires the reflection of oneself. It requires giving the mind the freedom to wander aimlessly from thought to thought. It requires letting go of the utilitarian desire to “optimize” or “utilize” everything and embracing the richness of the moment. Creativity requires experiencing things for the sake of the experience alone. It requires the luxury of being still — a luxury that is almost impossible to obtain without the basic necessities of life.
Those who do not enjoy much leisure time cannot create as easily or as often as those who do. Throughout A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf stresses that physical needs must be met in order for the mind to find the time needed to create and imagine. Meeting physical needs gives creators the ability to preserve and protect the energy they need to create art. Mental, emotional, and physical energy can be drained in a variety of ways. While it may seem as if free time alone can give writers the pathway to creativity, that is not always the case.
Virginia Woolf states in her essay that “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” These needs represent the physical necessities of survival as well as freedom from worry about how one is to survive. “Leisure time” is not simply time. It is time to be at leisure — time without worry or stress when one can be alone and reflect.
The iconic image of a starving artist has long been cemented in our minds. A poet alone with nothing but their pen and parchment, crouched beneath a leaking roof in their one-room apartment, using their last candle to create their greatest masterpiece. But does this iconic image hold up to fact? Virgina Woolf says not. The majority of successful writers throughout history, according to Woolf, have been university men. Men who were granted the time and means to study in an era when resources to do so were rare. These men did not have to cook or clean, or in some cases, even shop for themselves. Some did not even have secondary professions. Their minds were free to explore and wander, to weave fascinating stories and brilliant philosophies with paper and ink.
Women, on the other hand, were tasked with the more mundane duties of housekeeping and child-rearing. They were not given books to study. They were not allowed to hold most professions and could often not even inherit wealth from their brothers and fathers. Any money they did earn for themselves belonged to their husbands. They seldom had the time or energy to scribble sonnets and craft novels and discover great philosophical truths. The women who were able to create works of art in spite of these obstacles were exceptional and often privileged in other ways. Virginia Woolf herself was born into a family with money and highly privileged in comparison to many other women of her time. Despite her family’s wealth, however, she had little control of it, and was even denied entrance into university libraries if she did not have a chaperone.
Conditions for women are much better today, but many of Woolf’s observations are, unfortunately, still relevant. For many families, an unequal amount of responsibility is placed upon women in the home and, although a woman’s wealth no longer belongs to her husband, there is still a large pay gap between what a man is paid and what a woman is paid even when they are performing the same work. To this day a woman’s time is not valued as much as a man’s by most of society.
Women, of course, are not the only ones who have faced and still face such challenges. Many have struggled throughout history to obtain the basic necessities required to survive, whether because of their race, sexuality, gender, mental health challenges, or economic status. Meanwhile, the wealthy elite have enjoyed the luxury of time and resources to create works of art and shape the larger narrative of their time. A few outliers have managed to create despite these obstacles, but most of the classics we read today were written by a minority of privileged men.
The fact that so many struggle to obtain the resources required to create, means that many creative voices are not being heard. The drive to create can so easily be thwarted by a lack of finances or time and space to create in. No matter how passionate an artist is about their work it is still work and requires the use of mental, emotional, and sometimes even physical energy. A creative needs resources to protect that energy and keep their spirit alive.
Virginia Wool is correct when she says that in order to write one needs money and a room of one’s own. Income and time and space to one’s self is needed to protect one’s energy, but more than that, it cultivates a sense of agency and independence that allows for original ideas. Virginia Woolf is not stressing the importance of these material means for their own sake so much as for their ability to protect a creator’s spirit and independent thought. While it may be more difficult for a woman to procure these necessities, any creator be they man, woman, or anything in between needs to protect and cultivate a spirit of one’s own.
Protect your spirit, my creative friends. It is the most valuable thing you own. All of our voices deserve to be heard.
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