Book review: "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf

Never has such a short book seemed so long. 

My copy of Virginia Woolf's 1929 book "A Room of One's Own" is just 125 pages long, but it took me almost two months to read. Why? Because each chapter was so exhausting that I had to take frequent breaks and get away from the book before I could continue on.

Reading this extended essay is like trying to follow a hyperactive child around the playground: Woolf zigs, she zags, she backtracks, spins around, pauses to rest, then suddenly zooms off in a new direction. 

It's too bad, for Woolf does have something important to say. "A Room of One's Own" is her commentary on the many obstacles that have prevented women over the centuries from succeeding as writers. Her conclusion is that women need a room of their own to write without distraction and plenty of money so they don't have to constantly worry about supporting themselves.

That conclusion is easy to understand, but Woolf's route there is not. There is one sentence in "A Room of One's Own" that is -- I kid you not -- 191 words long.  Deciphering that sentence alone is enough to merit a three-day rest. Despite the weighty matters Woolf wants to discuss, she seems incapable of saying anything in a straightforward manner. 

Take, for instance, this passage:

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison. 

Translation: Write what you want, and don't listen to what others say.

I know it may sound like I hated the book, but I really didn't. Woolf makes excellent points about how women have been treated unfairly and often denied a chance to succeed as writers.  And, I sometimes actually liked the process of decoding the hidden meanings of her sentences.  But while an occasional cryptic passage could be fun, a book full of them is tiresome.