A Room of One's Own Page #2

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grasses of the garden what force lies

behind that plain China of which we

dined and the beef and the custard and

the prunes

well said Mary Seaton on about the Year

1860 over to know the story she said

bored I suppose with the recital and she

told me Romans were hired committees met

envelopes will address circulars drawn

up meetings were held letters read out

servants promised so much mr. Sansa

won't give a thing the Saturday Review

has been very rude how are we going to

pay for the offices shall behold a

bazaar what about a concert can we get a

pretty girl to sit in the front row can

anyone get the editor of The Times to

print a letter can we get anything to

sign it lady thing is out of town well

that was the way it was done presumably

60 years ago and it was a prodigious

effort the founder of this college Emily

Davis said we ought to ask for 30,000 at

least it is not a large sum considering

there is but one college of the sort for.

Great Britain Ireland and the colonies

and considering how easy it is to raise

immense sums for boys schools but

considering how few people rarely wish

women to be educated at all it is a very

great deal

so obviously we cannot have wine and

partridges and servants carrying tin

trays on their heads that my friend we

cannot have sofas and separate rooms

every penny that could be scraped

together

or set aside for the building the

amenities will have to wait

and so we talked standing at the window

looking down as many thousands do every

night on the domes and towers of the

famous city beneath us

the gentleman's colleges look very

beautiful very mysterious in the autumn

moonlight the old stone with white and

venerable I thought of all the books

that were assembled I'm heir of the

pictures of old credits and were these

hanging in panel drums of the painted

windows and the fountains and the grass

of the quiet rooms looking across

squired quadrangles

fund I thought to whom I must admit of

the admirable smoke drink of the deep

armchairs and pleasant carpets of the

urbanity the geniality the dignity which

are the offspring of luxury privacy and

space

certainly our mothers not provided us

with anything comparable to all this

our mothers who found it difficult to

raise 30,000 pounds no there could be no

doubt about it for some reason or other

our mothers had mismanaged their affairs

very gravely

penny could be spared for amenities the

partridges and why for beetles and turf

for books and cigars for libraries and

leisure

to raise bare walls out of the bare

earth was the most they could do

the inevitable sequel to that visit to

Cambridge had started a swarm of

questions in my mind which seemed to

demand unfortunately a visit to the

British Museum

why did men drink wine and women water

why was one sex of prosperous and the

other so poor what effect had poverty on

fiction what conditions are necessary

for the creation of works of art I need

answers not questions and an answer can

only be had by consulting the learner

and the competitors if truth cannot be

found among the shareholders of the

British Museum then where is truth I

wonder if you have any notion how many

books are written about women in the

course of one year have you any notion

how many are written by men are you

young women aware that you are perhaps

the most discussed animal in the

universe I thought there was I with

notebook and pencil proposing to spend a

morning reading and supposing that by

the end of the morning

I should have transferred the truth to

my notebook but I should need to be a

herd of elephants to cope with all this

in despair around my eyes up and down

the long list of titles sex in its

nature might well attract doctors and

biologists what was much more difficult

to explain was by sex women that is also

attracts messes light-fingered novelists

young men with an MA degree men with no

degree at all men with no apparent

qualifications whatsoever saved that

they were not women

professor's school masters sociologists

clergymen novelists essayist journalists

all chasing my simple and single

question why are women poor every page

of my notebook was scribbled over with

notes the heading was women and poverty

but what followed it was women habits in

the Fiji Islands of weaker in moral

sense then South Sea Islanders age of

puberty among attractiveness of offered

a sacrifice to small size of brain of

less hair on the body of love of

children of weaker muscles of vanity of.

Shakespeare's opinion or dr. Johnson's

opinion all and so on how on earth.

Samuel Butler write wise men never say

what they think of women as far as I

could see wise men never say anything

else I couldn't possibly go home and

there's a serious contribution to my

study of women and fiction that women

had less hair on their bodies than men

or that the age of puberty among South.

Sea Islanders was 9 what is it 90

what I had been pondering where I should

have been coming to a conclusion I had

been sketching a face a figure it was

the face and figure of Professor von X

engaged in writing his monumental work

entitled the mental model and physical

inferiority of the female sex he was not

a man attractive to women heavily built

he had a great drought balance that he

have very small eyes he was very red in

the face

his expression suggested that he was

laboring under some emotion which made

him jab his pen of his paper as if he

was killing some obnoxious insect and

even when he had killed it that still

did not satisfy him he must go on

killing it even then some cause for

anger and irritation remains could it be

his wife I wondered was she in love with

a cavalry officer slim and elegant and

dressed in Astrakhan Oh to adopt the.

Freudian theory had he been laughed at

in his cradle by a pretty girl for even

in his cradle I do not think the

professor had been an attractive child

anyway for whatever reason the professor

was made to look very angry and very

unattractive in my drawing

but why well all the professor's angry I

thought it better to narrow the inquiry

and turn to the historian who records

not opinions but facts to find out under

what conditions women live not

throughout the centuries but in England

say at the time of Elizabeth for it is a

perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a

word of that extraordinary literature

when every other man it seemed was

capable of a song or a sonnet so I

turned to Professor Trevelyan history of.

England once more I looked up women

found positional and turning to the

pages indicated I come across this

wife-beating

was a recognized right of man and was

practiced without shame by high as well

as low similarly the daughter who

refused to marry the gentleman of her

parents choice was liable to be locked

up beaten and flung about the room

without any shock inflicted on public

opinion marriage was not an affair of

personal affection but a family avarice

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