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The image of a room that the woman writer can own and use to write in, away from the demands of traditional womanhood, is a powerful and vivid symbol of the life of intellectual freedom Woolf is championing for the women attending her lectures. Woolf describes the forgotten women, the women unable to live up to their artistic potential, as inhabiting busy family spaces and always living dependent upon men rather than owning their own property. She therefore sees a room of one's own as representing the quintessential needs of future women writers if they are to create their own literary legacy.
A Room of One's Own Quotes in A Room of One's Own
The A Room of One's Own quotes below all refer to the symbol of A Room of One's Own. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.
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Chapter 3
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What one wants, I thought—and why does not some brilliant student at Newnham or Girton supply it?--is a mass of information; at what age did she marry; how many children had she as a rule; what was her house like, had she a room to herself; did she do the cooking; would she be likely to have a servant?
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Chapter 4
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She will write of herself where she should write of her characters. She is at war with her lot. How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?
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Chapter 5
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Give her a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speak her mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and she will write a better book one of these days.
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A Room of One's Own Symbol Timeline in A Room of One's Own
The timeline below shows where the symbol A Room of One's Own appears in A Room of One's Own. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...explains how she came to think about these themes as expressed in the title " A Room of One's Own " when she sat down to think about the subject. She considers what one means...
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...the matter. She can only offer her opinion, that a women needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. She can show how she came to this opinion...
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