History or Herstory?

From the very beginning, history has been written by men. They were the ones who first had access to study in universities, to have a relationship with literature based on the reading or on the writing as well, and to think beyond the books. Then, the opposite happened to women. Since they had to devote their time only to raise their children, be a good wife and care about the house chores; their cognitive skills and intellectual capacity were left aside because these were not useful for the role they had to play in society. Men did not even realize how thoughtful and revolutionary their ideas could be. After this background of almost a century ago up to the present, there is still a current question, which is, how different could the understanding of the western world would be if men and women had started writing their thought both at the same time?

While the time passed by, women started feeling the need of expressing their inner thoughts and ideas as well as men did. Only the bravest ones dared to take a step forward and put in paper what they felt about her selves and the sad society they were living in. Virginia Woolf was one these. She was one of the most representative feminists who contributed to support the British literary world with the willing of including women’s writing in a trend that used to be completely male. She started exploring the books, not to be superior to them but to enrich readers’ minds and thoughts with both writing styles.

Virginia Woolf was an ahead of time critical thinker. In her essay “A room of one’s own” written in 1929, she claims that the main needs for a woman who writes are money and a room for herself. As stated in the essay: “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. This was due to the situation that the female gender was in because of the rejection from men, and the little importance that their intelligence and potential were given. She struggled for this in order to write in good conditions. She dared to say that women were able to write as brilliantly as men, and create transcendent pieces of writing, like the ones by Shakespeare.

The main topic of this essay is “Women and Fiction”; theme which represents the most inner thoughts and dreams of a generation of women after war times (First World War 1914 – 1918). Period which was very useful for women in order to think about their right to express themselves and speak out loud for what was fair and right for them, as mentioned above. Later on, women strove for their opportunity to study at universities and take advantage of their intellectual capacities and skills.

When Virginia Woolf wrote this essay, she made it with the purpose of making women aware of their own needs if they were to write. Due to the fact that men were the only ones who wrote up to then, gender equality was an issue that they had to struggle for if they wanted to be into literature as authors. Both, women and men’s minds have different qualities and should work together as a natural complement. Woolf calls it “The Unity of the Mind”, in the sixth chapter of the essay she states: “... it is natural for the sexes to co-operate. One has a profound, if irrational, instinct in favour of the theory that the union of man and woman makes for the greatest satisfaction, the most complete happiness” (p.p. 74) Based on this then, how objective would history had been if it had been written by men only? It would be totally questionable. Women needed to be acknowledged as authors, therefore to have a history written by both men and women, and not only by the male representatives.

Certainly, Virginia Woolf’s thoughts were an important basis for a transforming social change. Although she belonged to the upper class, she stood up for what was right, even when she stood alone at the beginning and supported women from all social backgrounds; educated and uneducated. She invited them to speak up for change and freedom, and challenge prejudices and the fear of being discriminated just because they were women. After all, this would benefit not only them but literature as such and the readers with the rich mixture of thoughts and writing styles from male and female writers.