Vegblog 1/4/09: The Writer as Prisoner of Gender

In “A Room of One’s Own”, Virginia Woolf offers a pre-feminist essay on why men have always dominated the writing scene, and what women need in order to change that. The book began as a lecture on women in fiction she was requested to make, which she eventually expanded and had published.

Woolf suggests a bisexual approach to writing, if it is to be successful: “Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the act of creation can be accomplished. . . The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness. There must be freedom and there must be peace.” She recognizes that writers, be they male or female, are really a mix of both genders and must utilize that sexual duality in their writing. (The best writers, in my view, are those who cannot be correctly identified as one gender or another through their writing.)

Woolf also discusses the many aspiring, frustrated female writers throughout history who suffered from a chronic lack of time, material resources, social acceptance, and opportunities to practice their craft, suggesting that society is the poorer for having suppressed their talents. She bemoans the fact that women have been too busy taking care of children and their husbands (historically the principal wage earners), and maintaining their households. And she pessimistically concludes that women need a fixed income and a room of their own in order to be successful writers, requirements that they have often lacked (fortunately, she did not).

In the more upbeat and downright inspiring “If You Want to Write”, a 1938 classic by writer and teacher Brenda Ueland reissued in the late 1980s, a chapter called “Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It for their Writing” talks about those same female deprivation issues Woolf discussed. Ueland encourages women to, in effect, dare to create a room of their own (metaphorically speaking) and do what they love to do, because in the end, their family and friends, and ultimately the society they live in, will be the better for it: She explains, “For to teach, encourage, cheer up, console, amuse, stimulate or advise a husband or children or friends, you have to be something yourself. And how to be something yourself? Only by working hard and with gumption at something you love and care for and think is important.”

You’re probably protesting at this point that times have changed and women are now able to pursue a writing career, or any other career, with impunity. Well, yes and no. Nowadays, post-feminist women are desperately trying to prove they’re multitaskers by precariously balancing motherhood, family, social life and their jobs and trying to stay healthy and sane at the same time. When do they have the time to sit down in that metaphorical room and write, if that’s their passion? Ueland would suggest that women have to make time or they will lose their souls. And what good is a soul-less woman to those she loves?

Lastly, here’s my summary of the simple advice that Ueland offers to aspiring writers of all genders in the last pages of her book:

1. Know that you have talent, are original and have something important to say.
2. Know that it is good to work, a joy and a privilege.
3. Write freely, recklessly, in first drafts.
4. Tackle anything you want to without fear of failure.
5. Don’t be afraid of writing bad stories.
6. Don’t fret or be ashamed of what you have written in the past.
7. Try to discover your true, honest, no-B.S. self.
8. Think of yourself as incandescent power illuminated by the forces of the universe (“God”, to believers).
9. If you are never satisfied with what you write, that’s a good sign. It means you know you have to keep trying.
10. When discouraged, keep working.
11. Don’t be afraid of yourself or censor yourself when you write.
12. Don’t always appraise your work and negatively compare yourself to others, because you’re unique.

Brenda Ueland lived until she was 93, doing what she loved doing without guilt.