rough draft

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 the society. Men did not even realize how thoughtful and revolutionary their ideas could be. After this background of more than a century before up to the present, there is still a current question, which is, how different could the understanding of the western world have been 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 started putting in paper what they felt about herselves and the sad society they were living in. Virginia Woolf was one these. She was one of the most representative feminists who went against this male trend. 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 Shakespeare’s…



Conclusion: Certainly, Virginia Woolf’s thoughts were an important basis for a transforming social change. She stood up for what was right, even when she started standing alone.

(to be continued)