Hanne's blog

"500 a year and a room of one's own, with a lock on the door".

That is what women should have had, according to Virginia Woolf, in order for a woman to to have been able to write "War and Peace" or the works of Shakespeare.

The book is about Women and Fiction, mostly about women writing fiction - or not.

Much has changed since this book was written. Women has got the 500 a year now, or at least the possibility of economic independence, since we can make our own money. And we can travel and go out alone in the evening (in some places) and we are not denied from the universities.

But have we got a room of our own? Perhaps even with a lock on the door? If we want it enough to live alone, we probably do, but many women stills want a family. And how many women with a family has a study of their own where they can close the door? Compared to how many men?

When would she go there, anyway, when would she have free time after work, housework and family management, with someone else looking after the children and leaving behind bad conscience about things undone? In two or three generations? Would she go then?

I'm not very much into feminism as such, at least not a way any traditional feminist would recognize, but it's an interesting observation to make, about one self and others.

Perhaps it's because we're still lousy carpenters :-) (apologies to women for whom the last sentence does not apply).