Beneath Woolf's argument about what it takes for a woman to create fiction is another more universal argument about the nature of truth, which inevitably casts a shadow over the points she makes. Woolf seems to realize two main points about the nature of truth that she passes on to her audience.
The first point has to do with is subjectivity. As a lecturer, she says she hopes that her listeners find some truth in what she is saying, but she doesn't claim to be able to impart it herself. She claims that all truth is a kind of experience and is subjective. She hopes to impart something truthful, not by stating facts or beliefs but by showing her experience and perspective and, in doing so, perhaps the listener can deduce something true. She goes about the essay in this vein, describing with an "I" voice the sensory and mental processes of her day.
The second point is that the quest for truth connects her with both the women and men in her story. As the narrator finds herself shut out of college buildings and women writers absent on the library shelves, she observes the extent of the intellectual life around her and, indeed, in front of her in the form of the women of Newnham and Girton whom she is addressing. Her pursuit of knowledge and her taste for debate and intellectual expression connects her with those around her, including the male ‘professor' types who have been so supported by society.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Truth ThemeTracker
Truth Quotes in A Room of One's Own
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.
Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse.
Perhaps now it would be better to give up seeking for the truth, and receiving on one's head an avalanche of opinion hot as lava, discoloured as dish-water.
A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the
highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant.
Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.
