Virginia Woolf "A Room Of One's Own" Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Mary Benton commenced chapter 2 by raising the questions
“Why is one gender so prosperous and one so needy?” and
“What effect does poorness have on literature?”
She took pencil and notebook and went to the reading room in the British museum to search for the truth

She was astonished, amazed and stunned, when she discovered how many books men wrote about women in the course of one year. Books with titles like “Gender and its nature” were not only published by doctors or biologists but also by young novelists whose only qualification seemed to be that they were no women. Women, on the contrary, did not write books about men. “Why are women so much more interesting for men than vice versa?

Why Samuel Butler[1] did said: “Wise men never say what they think about women?”
Judging by the books at hand Mary Benton had the impression that they seemed do nothing else, unfortunately the men's opinions were very different.

Pope wrote e. g. “Women are most often completely despicable”
La Bruyere[2] said “Women are extremes they are either better or worse than men”
Napoleon thought that women were incapable; Dr. Jonson[3] put forward the opposite opinion.

The truth about women was not touchable. From what she read and saw Mary Benton created artificially professor X who wrote the volume “The mental, moral and physical inferiority of women”. What prompted him to write this book? He was obviously furious but why? Possibly the insistence on the female inferiority helped him to stick to his own superiority.

Then Mary Benton referred gratefully to her own independence for she had inherited an annuity for life amounting 500 pounds per year. Around the time she received the money women got the entitlement to vote. Mary Benton admitted that the money was infinitely more important.

Before inheriting the money she had tried to survive by addressing envelopes, reading aloud to old ladies, teaching children the alphabet and making artificial flowers. To put it in a nutshell, she exercised all activities that were available to women before 1918. Mary Benton briefly remembered the bitterness in these days and the relief she felt when she got her permanent income. No once more did she need to hate a man, he could not harm her. No once more did she need to flatter a man, he could not give her anything.


[1] Samuel Butler (1835–1902), a novelist and critic, was maligned for his free opinions
[2] Jean de la Bruyere (1645-1696) famous French writer
[3] Dr. Samuel Jonson (1704-1784) poet, critic, biographer and lexicographer, one of the most influential men at his time was highly appreciated by Virginia Woolf.