A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own Summary | Chapter 1 Summary

The narrator has been asked to present a lecture about women and fiction. She opts instead to lecture about a woman's need for a room of her own.

She asks the reader to call her Mary Beton or Mary Seton or Mary Carmichael as she sits on a riverbank and wonders what the words "women and fiction" mean. Maybe it simply means, she thinks, making some remarks about certain women writers. On the other hand, it might mean something about what women are like or even women and the fiction they write. On the other hand, perhaps it means fiction about women. It could mean some of all of these. The problem with any of these possibilities is the difficulty in coming to a conclusion, which is the main responsibility of a speaker. Therefore, she will attempt to explain how she came to the topic of a room of one's own. Any time a subject is controversial, as this one is, one must show how such a conclusion was arrived at. Therefore, she has decided to write about two fictional schools: Oxbridge and Fernham.

She is sitting on this riverbank on a fine October day surrounded by golden and crimson bushes and on the opposite bank are drooping willows. As she walks, she encounters a beadle, a sort of unofficial policeman of a church or a campus of a school, who turns her back from proceeding onto the grounds of Oxbridge. Thoughts of Charles Lamb, who had been at Oxbridge over a hundred years ago, come to mind. She thinks of how he had written a commentary about Milton's Lycidas, the manuscript of which lies in the library of Oxbridge, just a few yards away. Therefore, she proceeds to the library but is turned away, because, as she is told, women may enter there only if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or with a letter of introduction.

Offended that she has been refused entrance, she thinks, "That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again."

With an hour before luncheon, she ponders what to do next. She hears the sound of an organ. Because the outside of the buildings is so beautiful, she doesn't try to enter the chapel but watches the congregation assembling—old and young alike, the younger ones reminding her of crabs and crayfish. She recalls the history of the school. She knows that gold and silver were poured out in great measure to build it on what was then a marsh. It was begun in "the age of faith" and continued into the age of reason with money still flowing in, first from the coffers of kings and noblemen and then from merchants and manufacturers to fund chairs, libraries, laboratories, observatories, and delicate instruments. Now it is lunchtime.

She has been invited to lunch at the school, and she describes it in some detail. The luncheon, she writes, features elaborately prepared and expensive food. She ponders the difference in the conversation at a luncheon here now and one before the war (World War I).

After lunch, she walks down the avenue, and gates begin to close behind her with innumerable beadles locking them. She travels along the street to Fernham. She is to have dinner there at half-past seven. As she walks, she thinks of the poetry of the past—of lines from Tennyson and from Christina Rosetti and compares them to post-war poets who express feelings that are not lyrical and are not easily remembered. She reaches Fernham and finds the gate open with no beadle guarding it. Dinner is served in the great hall, and the fare is very plain. She is visiting a friend who teaches science at Fernham, and goes with her to her rooms following dinner for a drink. They gossip about common acquaintances. Then they discuss the differences between the two schools, the wealthy one for men only and Fernham, which had been built after a struggle to raise £30,000. The meager support accounts for the difference in the campuses and in the food served at the two meals she has eaten.

The two women discuss this difference and conclude that the reason is that women have no wealth. Instead of learning to make money, they bring up families. If, instead, they had lived their lives as their fathers, husbands and brothers, they would have had the money to build a great university. If that had happened, then women would be enjoying the life of a liberally endowed profession or perhaps exploring or writing. However, if women live such lives, there will be no one to bring up the children. In addition, even if she had earned money instead of having the children, she could not have possessed it—it would have been her husband's property.

Therefore, she returns to her room at the inn where she is staying and wonders what affect this difference between the poverty and insecurity of the one and the extravagant lifestyle and security of the other has on the individual.