But for women, I thought, looking at the empty shelves, these difficulties were infinitely more formidable. In the first place, to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a soundproof room, was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble, even up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since her pin money, which depended on the goodwill of her father, was only enough to keep her clothed, she was debarred from such alleviations as came even to Keats or Tennyson or Carlyle, all poor men, from a walking tour, a little journey to France, from the separate lodging which, even if it were miserable enough, sheltered them from the claims and tyrannies of their families. Such material difficulties were formidable; but much worse were the immaterial. The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility. The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Mapping A Room of One’s Own is a research-based website inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1929 seminal essay. A work published after the lectures that the author delivered at Newnham and Girton women’s colleges at the University of Cambridge in October 1928.
Mapping A Room of One’s Own constitutes an ongoing project on the notions of gender, domesticity, inequality, social injustice, private/public spaces, shelters and female gardens. Its purpose is to further contribute to academic research and studies on contemporary art in reference to the Woolfian room.
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Mapping A Room of One's Own 