A room of one's own

I have just finished re  - reading Virginia Woolf "A Room of One's Own" the seminal work by  first wave feminist writer Virginia Woolf , looking at Women in Fiction. Based on a lecture given to female students at Gerton College, Cambridge , and later expanded into a 6 part philosophical novelette on the subject, it was like sitting listening to the lecture myself. I had read it years ago but realise that it is true that a book is meant to come to you at a particular stage in your life where you are receptive. This is true when I read "A Room of One's Own". The analogies that she uses such as the invention of Shakespeare's fictional sister to prove that a woman could not have written his plays at that time; the closed doors of the library; and the famous taxicab blending the two minds of female and male into an androgynous mind are illuminating. She does eventually reject androgyny in favour of feminism and her arguments are strong. You have to have walked down Whitehall in the skirts of a woman before you can understand what it is to think and be a woman. The clothing was restrictive which also brings me to thinking about the conventions of dress nowadays. On the catwalks today androgyny is always present but as Woolf discovered that does boost the idea of male  intellectual superiority over the female who was forced in the interwar years to cross dress or become a "mannish lesbian". A woman should always be a woman and Woolf broke many literary traditions to champion this .