A Room of One's Own Page #5

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earned them the right to speak their

mind for now that Aphra Behn had done it

girls could go to their parents and say

you need not give me an allowance I can

make money by my pen of course for years

to come the answer was yes by leading

the life of Aphra Behn death would be

better but it is she shady and amorous

though she was makes it not quite

fantastic for me to say two huge night

earn 500 a year by your wits

it is a truth universally acknowledged

that a single man in possession of a

good fortune must be in want for wife

without boasting or giving pain to the

opposite sex one may say that Pride and.

Prejudice is a good book certainly I'm

not alone in saying that I should not

have been ashamed of being caught in the

act of writing Pride and Prejudice but

Jane Austen was glad that a door hinge.

Creek that she might hide her manuscript

if anyone came in to Jane Austen there

was something discreditable in writing.

Pride and Prejudice but the chief

miracle is that there is no sign that

had she not had to hide her manuscript.

Pride and Prejudice would have been a

better book here was a woman about the

year 1800 writing without hatred without

bitterness without fear without

preaching and when people compared as

they rightly do Shakespeare and Jane

Austen they mean that the minds of both

had consumed all impediments for that

reason we do not know Jane Austen and we

do not know Shakespeare for that reason

Jane Austen pervades every word she

wrote and so does Shakespeare

if she suffered in any way from her

circumstances it was in the narrowness

of the life that was imposed upon her

she never traveled she never rode

through London in an omnibus she never

had luncheon in a shop by herself but

perhaps it was the nature of Jane Austen

not to want what should not got but was

that true of Charlotte Bronte the woman

who wrote Jane Eyre had more genius in

her than Jane Austen but she will write

of herself when she should write of her

characters she cannot express her genius

hold an entire she's at war with her lot

how could she help but die young cramped

and forted but play for a moment with

the thought of what might have happened

if Charlotte Bronte had possessed say

300 a year in fact the foolish woman

sewed the copyright of her novels

outright for 1,500 pounds but she knew

no one better how enormous Lee a genius

would have profited if experience in

intercourse and travel had been granted

her they were not granted they were

withheld

and I asked you to accept the fact that

all those wonderful novels select Emma

watering Heights Middlemarch

were written by women with no more

experience of life than could enter the

house of a respectable clergyman written

to in the common sitting-room of that

respectable house and by women so poor

but while writing weathering Heights.

Emilie promptly could only afford a few

choirs of writing papers a time as well

naturally as cooking and ironing for the

family and both kneading and baking the

bread what genius

what integrity Emily Bronte must have

needed in the face of all that

opposition in the midst of that purely

patriarchal society to hold fast the

thing without shrinking only she and

Jane Austen did it perhaps that was the

finest feather in their caps they wrote

as women right not as men right there

alone ignored the perpetual admonitions

of the eternal pedagogue to think this

right that there learn with death to

that persistent voice not rumbling now

domineering now grieve not shocked not

angry now avuncular that voice which

cannot let women alone this must be at

them like a conscientious deafness

assuring them to be refined

even into the politicus and the poetry

criticism of sex admonishing them if

they would be good and when sun shining

prize to keep within certain limits to

acknowledge the limitations of their sex

I'm not going to stir those old fools

but it would have needed a very store

word young woman in 1828 too ignored all

those snubs and chidings and promises of

prizes huh what a firebrand she would

need to be to say oh but you can't buy

literature too

literature is open to everybody now I

refuse to allow you Beadle there you are

to turn me off the grass lock up your

libraries if you like there is no gate

no lock no bolt that you can set upon

the freedom of my mind

but perhaps to think as I have been

thinking of one sex as distinct from the

other is a method

it is fatal for anyone to be a man or

woman pure and simple one must be woman

manly or man womanly it is especially

fatal for any woman to lay the least

stress on any grievance to plead even

with justice and he calls to speak in

any way consciously as a woman and fatal

is not just a mere figure of speech for

anything written with that conscious

bias is doomed to death it ceases to be

fertilized brilliant and effective

powerful and masterly it may appear for

a day or two it must wither at night for

it cannot grow in the minds of others

some collaboration has to take place in

the mind between the man and the woman

for the art of creation to be

accomplished some marriage of opposites

has to be consummated

there must be freedom there must be

peace not a Wilms great what-a-light

glimmer the curtain should be glue

strong

and when his experience is over the

writer should lie back and let his mind

celebrate its nuptials in darkness

here I should stop but the pressure of

convention degrees that I should end

with a pet eration

when I rummaged about in my mind I can

find no noble sentiments about being

companions and equals and influencing

the world higher ends all I find myself

saying simply and prosaically is that it

is more important much more to be

yourselves than anything else do not

dream of influencing other people I

would say if I knew how to make it sound

exalted think of things in themselves

women are hard on women women dislike

women but I often like women I like

their unconventionality I like that

anonymity what I particularly like about

women but are you not sick to death of

the word I can assure you I am so let me

adopt a sterner term young women please

attend the peroration is beginning

you are in my opinion disgracefully

ignorant you have never made the

discovery of any sort of importance

you've never shaken an empire you have

never led an army into battle the plays

of Shakespeare and the symphonies of

Beethoven are not by you nor have you

introduced the blessings of civilization

to a barbarous race what is your excuse

it's all very well for you to say

pointing to the streets and squares and

forests of the globe swarming with black

and white and coffee colored inhabitants

all busily engaged in traffic and

enterprise and lovemaking we have had

other work on our hands I told you

before Shakespeare had a sister she died

young alas she never wrote a word she

lies buried at the crossroads where the.

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