Virginia Woolf

        Ever since we read a couple chapters of A Room of One's Own, I have not been able to get her words out of my head. I really connected with the honesty she put into her words. Because I felt so strongly about the chapters, I decided to check out the book at the library. I enjoy it even more than the sections we read in class. I think what I like most about her is that most of her writing in the book is her frank commentary about her life. She seems to allude to her feelings about a certain person or place by the way she describes it in the book. As Prof. Reed mentioned in class, the first chapter was hilarious when she compared the two colleges where she was a speaker. At times, she used satirical wit and humor to describe the men at the male-only college who seemed almost nervous of her wisdom as a woman. Woolf has this certain charm about her writing that makes me want to keep reading, yet I can tell that she is a strong, individual women.

       I never thought of myself as a feminist before, not that it's a bad thing. I feel like in our age, if a woman is strong and doesn't like when other people go out of their way to help her, she is pidgeonholed into the term, "feminist." On the flip side of this, if a woman likes the attention she gets when men try to help her all the time and acts dumb or flirts constantly to keep the attention going, other women say she's "against her own kind!" Personally, I don't think I fit into either category. Like Woolf in A Room of One's Own, I am constantly searching for answers to difficult questions, ones that really don't exist. The narrator spent time in the library researching questions like, "Why are women poor?" and "Why are there shelves of books about women written by men and barely any books by women?" I feel like I am constantly looking for answers to tough questions just like her, and both of us are finding that there really is no one answer.
       While I am happy that the feminist movement took off and got women the right to vote and made them equal to men (at least on government paper. . .not that these rights are always enforced), I don't feel like I'm still striving to "fight the man." I think women and men should get paid the same amount for performing the same job, but I'm not going to yell at a man if he opens a door for me because he's "taking away my power." I'm usually a bit of a loner because I like to be alone with my thoughts, so I'm used to doing things myself and for myself. I won't lie and say I don't appreciate being in a relationship and having a boyfriend occasionally pick up the tab at a restaurant or open the car door for me for a date. I don't think he's belittling my ability to pay for food or open a door, I think he's doing it out of love or to show that he cares for me, and I find absolutely nothing wrong with that. All in all, I think it's the thought process behind the action that really counts.