A Room of Your Own: A Story Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Famous Essay

Many women will talk about how they were only able to pursue their passions or hobbies, one which might be writing, after their children were grown, when their responsibilities to family were finally lightened. Their hands were busy, and their heads were full of the details of life - work, children, parents - all worthwhile of the time invested, but which don’t allow the time and space for exploring the depths of one’s creativity.

Iconic modernist writer Virginia Woolf wrote about women’s dilemma in her book-length essay, “A Room of One’s Own” in 1929. As well as the weight of work and personal pressures, she identified lower wages and a male-dominated culture that kept women from taking their rightful place in the literary world. She cites women, such as George Sand and George Elliot, who published their manuscripts under male pseudonyms to avoid being sidelined because of their gender.

Women need a space - and time - for themselves, she argued, and that is the basis for Beth Kephart’s interpretation of Woolf’s essay, a room of your own. Her protagonist, resembling Virginia Woolf in Julia Breckenreid’s pleasant watercolour paintings, threads her way through a garden, searching for the spot:

Here it is:

Her place to think.

Her place to dream.

Her place to be.

Kephart’s Virginia finds her space and then asks the children (girls and boys) reading the book where they find a space to think, to dream, to be, recognizing that most children don’t have access to idyllic English gardens but instead live in cities, finding their special spots in bedrooms, parks, at and under tables, in libraries, or on a bus. She nudges children to find a way to separate themselves from the real world and let their imaginations flow:

One needs a room

to be one’s

excellent,

imagining,
day-

and night-dreaming

self.

Children have less time to be bored these days; indeed, many don’t know what to do with unprogrammed time. With gentle words, Kephart reminds them about the possibilities silence and stillness can offer. In her “Author’s Note”, she draws a parallel between where Woolf might have written and the places where she wrote this book. She tells children: “We can imagine our way toward the rooms of our own.”

Breckenreid’s pretty paintings invite a child to stop, examine and imagine. There are book-birds winging across the sky, children leaning against tree trunks, lying on rugs, curled up under tables and playing jumprope with friends. Her painting of a girl whose long red hair is being blown in the wind, morphing into clouds and a starry night, with a ship sailing on the sea, is particularly evocative and complementary. The colourful garden on the last page, surrounding a black and white photograph of Virginia Woolf in her own garden, draws smiles.

The cover, on which butterflies decorated with Virginia Woolf’s writing flit about, is an invitation to open the book and turn the pages. A Room of Your Own can be used by teachers and caregivers to prompt children to find their own special place, in school or at home, where they can think, dream, and be. It can also be used by children, themselves, to unleash their artistic and literary potential, simply by taking time and finding a room of their own.