Education and Virginia’s Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own

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“Only the gold and silver flowed now, not from the coffers of the king, but from the purses of men who had made, say a fortune from industry, and returned, in their wills, a bounteous share of it to endow more chairs, more lectureships, more fellowships in the university where they had learnt their craft” (754). This is a quote from Virginia’s Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own”. Here she is making a point about universities and the funding that they received from men that had gone to school there. Woolf’s essay takes place during the early nineteen hundreds when most women did not attend a university. There was great inequality of those who attended school because men had control over all the money. The men in society either received money from inheritances, or from industrial occupations, as Woolf mentions in her quote. Woolf’s essay focuses on the inequality of female writers’ recognition compared to men’s. She points out the fact that women writers were not very recognized by society because of their gender. This is true for the time period, but the reason that these women were not recognized is because of educational reasons.

During Woolf’s time (the early 1900’s) women simply did not have the same resources that men had in order to be educated. The most important resource that they were lacking in was money. It took lots of money to be educated, and very few women had money of their own to attend a university. For the few that were educated, their education took place at an institution that was much less funded than a man’s institution. This funding for the institution includes the building itself and the quality of education. The quality of the education depends on the teachers that teach the classes and the ...

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...an go to the best schools today. I am certain that this trend will also continue well into the future. So what difference does financial aid make? The difference is that now everyone can go to quality university rather than a low quality, low ranking university. Not every person can attend the best university. This is impossible.

It is quite sad that female writers were not viewed as being as important in the past. I think that there have been many major changes to make men and women more equal today. The major equality factor is through education. Education is not only more possible for women, but for everyone. The many types of financial aid available make it possible for those who choose to attend a quality university, to achieve their goals.

Work Cited

Woolf, Virginia “A Room of One’s Own.” Ways of Reading, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999

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