A Room of One's Own, Chapter One - Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf's chapter one of "A Room of One's Own" surprised me. I obviously knew that there was discrimination against women in society, but this just opened my eyes to the reality of it. I personally believe that it is not fair that women cannot do certain things, get an education or expand their education freely. I found it crazy that women were only allowed in the library if they were with a man. Women were excluded from many things in life for no reason. She notices that new literature, poetry, etc. that was written after the war was more gruesome, detailed, and outside of everyone's comfort zones. I find it strange that people did not want to read the literature because it was too outside their comfort zone.

Personally, I think that this relates to women and their lives. It was different for women to be seen as equal humans who could get an education. It was difficult at first for this to occur because it was so outside everyone's comfort zones. It was an idea that was unfamiliar to people which is why it was so difficult to implement. I was changing a society and culture which is not that easy to do.

Woolf wants to dig deeper than the issues of women and fiction. It is a controversial subject that does not have a proven right or wrong answer. When someone is telling the truth, it is that individual person's truth, how they interpreted the situation. No one's interpretations and truths are going to be exactly the same, and the amount of fact and truth given when someone tells the "truth" is impossible to tell. Usually when people lie, it is not a complete lie; there are usually bits of truth in it. I found this to be very interesting and very true.