Virginia Woolf s A Room of One s Own: A Foundational Feminist Vision in Euro-American Thought

Abstract

Virginia Woolf’s seminal work, A Room of One’s Own, published nearly a century ago, is reexamined in this study as not only a feminist manifesto but as a feminist vision that anticipated some of the key features addressed in subsequent Euro-American feminist philosophies. Divided into three sections, the research offers a close analysis of Woolf’s text and its prescient insights, discussing separately the particular focal concerns of British, American, and French feminism, and elaborating on the ways these were envisioned and addressed as early as 1929 in Woolf’s visionary text. The study utilizes Showalter’s typology to analyze Woolf’s text and to organize elaborations on the points Woolf addresses and envisions that became fundamental within subsequent Euro-American feminist criticism, including the correlation between economic and social conditions and intellectual freedom, the necessity of women’s inclusion in the literary canon, and the significance of feminine discourse and gynocriticism. By highlighting Woolf’s remarkable foresight, this research positions A Room of One’s Own not only as a foundational feminist text but also as a profound feminist vision that continues to inform feminist thought today. This re-examination of Woolf’s work contributes to on-going academic discourse surrounding feminist theory and literary criticism.