Through her extended essay "A Room of One's Own" Virginia Woolf attempts to prove her belief that "genius needs freedom; it cannot flower if it is encumbered by fear, or rancor, or dependency, and without money freedom is impossible". This statement appears to be true when it is looked at without the proper context. Woolf attempts to use a fictional sister of Shakespeare and the Bronte sisters to prove her belief. But, Woolf is taking many liberties when using these people as characters, and they do not enhance her arguments. Anne Frank and Thoreau prove her wrong through their real life examples.
In her essay "A Room of One's Own" Virginia Woolf uses an imaginary sister of Shakespeare to prove her belief that "genius needs freedom; it cannot flower if it is encumbered by fear ... without money freedom is impossible". She has this imaginary sister, Judith, have the same genius as her brother William. However, Judith is hindered by her father and forced to marry. This provides the "fear" and "rancor" that keep her "freedom" away. These factors keep her out of the business of writing plays and thus keep her genius from being revealed to the world. Woolf later uses examples of real people, the Bronte sisters, and attempts to have them prove her belief. She claims that even though the sisters were great in the eyes of the world, they could have been better had society not hindered them because of their gender. Woolf again imagines a situation where this time, the sisters are in the middle of writing, but a man constantly walks in so they must immediately hide their work, causing them to loose their thought the potential of their work to lower.
These are good examples when looked at lightly, but if you look deeply these examples do not work to prove her statement. Judith is completely imaginary. Yes, if she were real than perhaps Woolf's argument would be valid, but she is not real. Since she is imaginary, Woolf can then bend the story to prove her theory; that genius needs freedom and that without money freedom is impossible. Anybody can create an imaginary character to prove one of their points. What is necessary is to use a real-life example. Woolf attempts to use this later on in chapter four with the Bronte sisters. Her argument is that their limited freedom hindered their genius. This cannot be proven because perhaps they were not hindered and they produced the best work possible. Both this argument and Woolf's could be true, but neither can be proven. Even if they were hindered, I am sure that they still did the best that could and the best that you can do is the maximum capacity that you have.
This statement is disproved by society. Thoreau went and lived out in the wilderness and did not have money. He still showed genius by writing Walden, despite not having any money. Anne Frank also disproves Woolf. Anne Frank was trapped in an apartment with her family while they were trying to hide from the Germans. She had great fear and very little freedom yet she still showed her genius by keeping her diary. Her diary showed the cruelty of the Nazis and the strength of her family. This may not be seen as an intelligence kind of genius, but to me it is a genius of how strong a person can be.
Good Rick. I agree with some of what you say here. Although, I do want to point out a few things, so I don't feel like a complete failure in my teaching of Woolf. ;-)
ReplyDeleteThoreau did have money of his own- Woolf is not talking about riches, she is talking about money to survive that one can call their own- if he didn't, he could never have made the decision, nor had the freedom, to move anywhere. Compare to Edna, whose only option was to move to a house that belonged to her husband because she could not make money of her own. Thoreau reduced and simplified his living expenses- he didn't starve or live in a tree. Again, Woolf is not talking about money in terms of being rich, she is talking about the freedom that comes from having money of our own. For instance, if you never get a job, you will have to spend the rest of your life asking your parents for money, explaining what it is for, and waiting for them to judge what you want to spend it on to be worthy or unworthy. Now imagine you do get a job but, legally, any money you make belongs to either your parents, or your wife... such was the case for women until the 19th century, whose fathers or husbands had the legal rights to any money they made.
I suppose you're right, also, that it can't really be proven that genius is hindered by fear, anger and/or prejudice. But I know I wonder whenever I read the genius of Maya Angelou, or Langston Hughes, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman: if they did not have so much to protest against, if their genius had not been trampled on their whole lives, couldn't they have written the greatness of Tolstoi and Dickinson?... and then they would have ended up being studied in the "important" Units of AP English curricula ;-). Woolf was as brilliant, logical, and genius as Thoreau was, and believed in many of the same ideologies... if she didn't have to protest for the simplest of rights for women, perhaps she could have carried on his fight for civil disobedience.
And doesn't Thoreau ultimately prove Woolf's major argument? He had the freedom, that money gave him, to go wherever he wanted, and society allowed him that unencumbered because he was a man. Thoreau was also a transcendentalist who belived that humans were at their best when completely self-reliant and independent- a large part of Woolf's argument. He went to live in the "woods" because he thought his genius would best flourish unhindered by societal influence.... the connection to Woolf's arguments seem pretty obvious.
Sorry I wrote my own blog. :-)