A Room Of One's Own: Raising Of Questions About Women Independence

Women’s issues is one of the most common themes that have been discussed for many years in literary world. These issues are put forward by some writers bravely in spite of the restraints they confronted which were broadly imposed by males in the patriarchial system of their times. Two of these writers who challenged the male dominant world of literature to defend their rights as females are Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Virginia Woolf. The former made a great success with her short story The Yellow Wallpaper in which she focuses on the struggle a woman has in her adventure to find herself in writing while the latter with the book A Room of One’s Own marked a new epoch in feminist literature of her own time. These two pieces of art has a lot in common and some differences in terms of dealing with the women’s problems and this essay will focus mostly on these common points as well as the contrasts.

The very first thing to be discussed is the main point given by Woolf that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction 1 She clearly states throughout the book that women cannot write as they do not have financial independence and a place to sit and write without any interruption. She has to be independent financially in order not to need to work anywhere else to make a living especially if she is not married. This way she can have more time to create. She has to have a private place of her own because she can create better when contemplates without anyone around and this is also related to having money. To illustrate this, Woolf gave the example of middle-class women of the 19th century writing only novels. As they did not have enough money for a private room, they had to write in a shared sitting room and with all the distractions, they could only write novels which need less concentration than poetry. 2 When The Yellow Wallpaper taken into consideration we can easily see that the woman had a spare room of her own, but she was distracted by the wallpaper which was not very pleasant at first and wanted another room. Her husband did not accept to renovate the room just for a few months. 3 If she had had enough money of her own, she could have had more chance to change the decoration of the room and would not be in such an insanity which was caused by that yellow wallpaper. Another point concerning this is that she was writing a journal in that room and her husband and sister in-law were constantly coming in to check her which hindered her a lot. In this circumstance, it was impossible for her to write something any better than a journal just like the middle-class women who could only write novels mentioned by Virginia Woolf.

Another point to be focused on is the restrictions which were imposed on women by men. They were not (are still not) given the same chance to have a career as given to men. They were forced to stay at home and be busy with domestic work and take care of the children. In the Yellow Wallpaper we can easily see a character who was limited by her husband not to do any work and write anything under the guise of giving her a rest cure for her psychological disorder. She was not let go out and have any social interaction with other people and thus became worse mentally and psychologically. She could not write as much as she wanted and this made her situation far more tragic. This shows up as Judith Shakespeare in A Room of One’s Own who was created as a fictional character by Woolf herself.

She was characterized as the sister of William Shakespeare and by virtue of not being given the same opportunity to write as given to her male sibling, she had a tragic end of committing suicide with the deficiency of self expression. Just like the woman in the Yellow Wallpaper, she was not very much taken seriously as a writer and supressed by the male dominant thoughts.

The case of Judith Shakespeare can also be given as an example of lack of self expression which is also shown in the Yellow Wallpaper. In both cases, these two women could not express themselves enough which would be a kind of a relief for their souls and minds and their situation got worse and worse.

One thing to point out is the point of view of men about seeing women inferior to themselves. In one part of her book Woolf talks about a professor saying that in fact he insisted on the inferiority of women to emphasize his superiority.4 Men do not underestimate women because they are only inferior to them, but because they want to show that they are superior. Gilman gives this idea of superiority by showing how insistent John was about making his wife have a rest cure. He got her to do this because he saw himself superior as a doctor and his wife was just a housewife suffering depression and at that time in need of his help. Because of the pressure of this feeling, the woman even could not tell him that she was getting worse and this cure did not work.

These two works of art should also be examined with their difference concerning the issues of women. The first thing to talk about here is the notion of the “room”. In Virginia Woolf, the room symbolize the freedom to write and self expression and it is emphasized as something positive for women. However, Gilman depicted the room and the yellow paper in such a way that that room became a prison for the woman and drove her insane at the end. The patterns on the walls, the creeping woman, the bars on the window are the indictations of being locked up. This is not of course being locked up in a room literally. It symbolizes being locked up as a woman in all these domestic pressures like doing the housework and having children and taking care of them, being a good wife to the huband and so on.

Another difference related to the concept of “room” is that in Virginia Woolf’s case women are not given the space they need to write and it is in their fathers’ or husbands’ hand to decide to give them a space or not. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the woman is given a room which is chosen by the husband. Although she has the freedom to have a room, she is not given the freedom to choose the room she wants. This again comes to the conclusion that in both cases we can strongly feel the dominance of the male figures controlling the women.

All these issues regarding the problems of women and their struggle against the male dominant society have been one of the main focuses of the feminist writers and Gilman and Woolf were two of them. Although these works seems to influence some of the women who have enough courage to fight for their freedom, unfortunately nothing much has changed today. Women (not everywhere) are supressed by a male figure either their fathers, brothers or their husbands and seen as inferior or second class citizens. Will this change in the future? It depends on the attitudes of women. If they really want more freedom, they have to fight for it. Otherwise, men will still be the king of the world.

Bibliographyy

1. Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own , Original Ed. (Istanbul: Ren Kitap, 2019)
2. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, The Yellow Wallpaper, First Edition (New England Magazine, 1892) 647-57