Chapter One - Oxbridge

Chapter Two - London

Chapter Three - Judith Shakespeare and Anon

A Room of One's Own is based on two lectures that Woolf gave at Newnham and Girton, British women's college in October 1928. Her ostensible subject is "Women and Fiction." When reading, you should keep in mind that it was only by 1866 that two women's colleges had been established. There were numerous men's colleges at Oxford and Cambridge from relatively hoary antiquity. Married women could not own property until 1880 and women only got the vote in 1919 in Great Britain.

1. Why does Woolf use the device of "fictionalizing" her subject? Do you find it effective?

2. Why does Woolf begin so abruptly? Who is the "you" and why is Woolf speaking on behalf of her audience?

3. Why are the mundane and concrete events that she describes in Chapter One so significant? Why begin with going on the grass and into the library--trespassing? Why describe the life of the men's college first and then the women's, especially the meals?

4. Why speak of the cat with no tail in Chapter One and cats in Chapter Three?

5. What is your interpretation of the final paragraph of Chapter One?

6. Why the British Museum in Chapter Two? Why are the patriarchs/professors angry? Why are women "looking-glasses", i.e., mirrors?

7. Why are money and the material conditions of life so important? The 500 pounds more important than the vote?

8. What is the significance of the comparison between women in history and women in poetry in Chapter Three?

9. What does Woolf get across through the devices of "Judith Shakespeare' and "Anon" in Chapter Three?

10. Analyze the key themes of either Chapter One, Two or Three. What did you find the most striking in the Chapter you chose?

Alice Walker 1944- "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" -  Walker coined the term "womanist' for an African-American feminist.  She won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. You can find biographical info about her at http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/walker_a.htm

Reading Questions on Walker

1. Why did men call certain black women saints? What does Alice Walker name them? Why?

2. What does Walker "make" of Phillis Wheatley? How were her loyalties and her mind divided?

3. How did black mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers affirm their spirituality and express their creativity? What do they hand down to their daughters?

4. What are the effects of Walker's citations of Woolf on 235, 239, and 240?

5.  What is usually meant by "high" versus "low" art?  What are some of the sources of this distinction? 

6.  Is there anything that is particularly significant about the form of artistic expression of Walker's mother as a gardener (as opposed to other forms of artistic expression mentioned: story telling, singing, quilting, etc.)?

7. Summarize the key points Walker makes in this essay. How does she convey these points?

1. Would you characterize the lives of women discussed by both Woolf and Walker as "oppressed"?  How would you define "oppressed"?
In what way? If you do not believe the women in these discussions are oppressed, how would you characterize their situation? 

2. How is the structure of women's existence in Woolf's and Walker's essays particularly harmful for women? What are the impediments to creativity and expression that exist for women that
do not exist for men?

3. If an oppressive conceptual framework does exist in the world Walker describes, who or what is its aim? What is the class that is being oppressed? Is it women or is it something else?  

4.  How do both Woolf and Walker deploy the concept of  (an artistic) "tradition"?

5.   In what sense are both Woolf and Walker arguing that subjectivity-identity or consciousness is multiple?