Woolf, of course, is not a character in her lecture. But by creating a narrator to carry the bulk of her lecture, she makes explicit her own role as author and creates a separation between herself and the ideas of the narrator, and the importance of fiction in communicating inner experience (since she relies on the narrator to communicate these ideas rather than doing so herself. Woolf essentially introduces the narrator at the beginning of the lecture and then takes over from the narrator at the end of the novel to provide closing remarks.
Virginia Woolf Quotes in A Room of One's Own
The A Room of One's Own quotes below are all either spoken by Virginia Woolf or refer to Virginia Woolf. 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:
).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Harcourt edition of A Room of One's Own published in 1989.
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.
Related Characters:
Virginia Woolf (speaker)
Related Symbols:
A Room of One's Own
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
The fact is that neither Mr. Galsworthy nor Mr. Kipling has a spark of the woman in him.
Related Characters:
Virginia Woolf (speaker)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed.
Related Characters:
Virginia Woolf (speaker), Judith Shakespeare
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire A Room of One's Own LitChart as a printable PDF.
Virginia Woolf Character Timeline in A Room of One's Own
The timeline below shows where the character Virginia Woolf appears in A Room of One's Own. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
Woolf has been asked to speak about Women and Fiction to a group of female students...
(full context)
Chapter 6
Here, the narrator leaves off and Virginia Woolf returns. She knows that her audience will have listened to Mary's journey with their own...
(full context)
The second criticism could be that Woolf has been too concerned with money. Haven't there been poor writers who have risen above...
(full context)
...why, then, if it is both so difficult to write fiction and socially dangerous, is Woolf so obsessed with it? Because she loves to read, she says. She charges her audience...
(full context)
Woolf suggests that her motives are not entirely selfish, though. There is something about writing that...
(full context)
Woolf acknowledges that women are supposed to hate women. She is expected to end with something...
(full context)
Finally, Woolf conjures the character of Judith Shakespeare again, who died and lies beneath the omnibuses driving...
(full context)