Virginia Woolf

A room of one's own 3rd Chapter

Virginia Woolf decided to turn to history rather than to the opinions and she tried to describe the condition in which women lived in the past, because fiction is not something autonomous or detached from reality but it is strictly linked with life. Analyzing women’s conditions of life and the way in which they were portrayed in fiction it appeared clear than there was a great paradox since women in literature were not wanting in personality, they were heroic, hideous, cruel, clever, beautiful, great as much as men, perhaps even greater. Women were of the utmost importance in literature but insignificant in history. They could hardly read or have an opinion of their own, they were subdued to men. A woman could have never written the plays of Shakespeare during his time, she could not have his genius because women received no education, moreover she should have overcome a lot of prejudices and the hostility of the whole society and so her mind would not have been free of expressing itself, which is an indispensable condition to create art.