A Room of One's Own

"Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size."
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
"Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice."
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
"I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young--alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh."
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
When I was young and Mormon--all my girlfriends would giggle and plan their weddings and the number of babies they would have. I would smile and nod and join in, trying to believe it was what I wanted too.

Then, at night, I'd crawl into my bed and read Virginia Woolf under the covers..and promise that I'd never get married for getting married's sake, that I would never give my entire life to the raising of babies and losing myself (though the two do not have to go hand in hand), and that somehow, somehow, I would find a man who would let my dreams be just as important as his....

And that always, always--I'd have a room of my own.