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BY JESSICA GILDERSLEEVE

‘But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain.’

With this rhetorical flourish Virginia Woolf begins A Room of One's Own (1929). The first word of the essay, ‘But,’ anticipates immediate argument from her imagined reader, the student audience watching her deliver it, and the university administrator who has commissioned the work. ‘A room of one's own?’ these audiences think. ‘Why? How is it relevant?’ Woolf's essay proceeds to explain: the ‘room’ is not a minor detail, but foundational for women's financial and social independence, and essential for the female writer.

I say ‘essay,’ though the work has also been called a manifesto, a work of fiction, a lecture, a fable, and a performance. It seems as difficult to define A Room of One's Own as it is for Woolf to define what that room has to do with the relationship between women and fiction. Even at its conclusion Woolf can only gesture towards the future, rather than provide clear instruction. But it is precisely in the uncertainty of Woolf's approach that we find the significance and relevance of the work. The many possibilities opened up by Woolf's opening question continue to fascinate readers and critics, and we will look at some of their points of view.

Virginia Woolf, 1927. Photographer unknown.