A Room of One's Own, by Virignia Woolf

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In A Room of One’s Own, Virignia Woolf presents her views evenly and without a readily apparent suggestion of emotion. She treads softly over topics that were considered controversial in order to be taken seriously as an author, woman, and intellectual. Woolf ensures this by the use of humor, rationalization, and finally, through the art of diversion and deflection. By doing this Woolf is able to not alienate her audience but instead create a diplomatic atmosphere, as opposed to one of hostility that would assuredly separate the opinions of much of her audience. As Woolf herself says, “If you stop to curse you are lost” (Woolf 93). Because of this, anger is not given full sovereignty but instead is selected to navigate the sentiments of her audience where she wills with composed authority and fascinating rhetoric. That being said, Woolf is not without fault. She occasionally slips up and her true feelings spill through. Woolf employs a stream-of-consciousness narrative, satire, and irony to express her anger towards male-controlled culture in what is deemed a more socially acceptable way than by out rightly saying that they suck.

The style of writing that Woolf is best known for is that of the stream-of-consciousness. When considering why she chose to write A Room of One’s Own using a stream-of-consciousness narrative, it should be taken into account the purpose of the frequent interruptions that occur for the speaker. She is stopped by an Oxbridge beadle for walking on the lawn of the college and in due course forgets what she was contemplating. She says, “The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 ...

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...overcome this part of herselfand just write as a person, as Austen does, that her book and story suffer.

Woolf argues that literature should be written calmly, wisely, and without personal sentiments but “personally”, I don’t think this is possible as emotion equates to passion. How is one to write well without some type of passion, whether it is derived from anger or love or hate or even fear? Where issue may arise is if the level of emotion is so high that it causes the writer to lose perspective. If the writer does in fact lose perspective, then it may generate flaws in the writing or be too opinionated that it could in turn cause disinterest or offense to the intended audience. It has been said that the purpose of all writing is to have an effect on those who read it, but how can an author accomplish that without passion – and therefore without emotion?

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