I was listening to an audiobook of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf the other day. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s about women and fiction. Virginia Woolf is more known for her novels, but she also wrote essays, and A Room of One’s Own is one of them. Published in 1929, it sets about the argument of how women — certainly in her time — still found it difficult to be writers.
She has lots of points of argument that are rather interesting. But the one the stood out for me the most was how women fiction writers can try too hard to write stories. Woolf called it ‘the flaw in the centre of [the book]’. So, what was this flaw?
A Flaw in the Book
To explain this more eloquently, it is necessary to understand the position of women writers in a bygone time.
Although many female novelists managed to get published in the 19th century, it wasn’t without boundaries or utmost persistence. Indeed, George Eliot was the pen name for Mary Ann Evans; the French novelist George Sand was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin — even the Bronte sisters wrote under assumed names. Others, like Jane Austen, published anonymously. This was mainly because of the restrictions placed on women of that time, and what was deemed appropriate for a woman. So putting her own name on her own work could mean refusal of publishing said work.
Of course, these restraints were the concept of a patriarchal society, which believed that women were limited in their mental faculties, and should, indeed, remember that(!) And that was the flaw. In order to be published, it was better for her to bend away from her honesty as a writer, to change the concept of her own creation, in order to be accepted for publication. As Woolf put it:
she had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others.
One of the novels that Woolf gives as an example of this deference is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I did take exception to this viewpoint, as I love Jane Eyre and have read it… umpteen times. But her point was not that Charlotte Bronte wasn’t a brilliant novelist, but that sometimes she let her frustrations in her writing restrictions come out in her work.
This is true — it is possible to hear Charlotte’s voice through the character of Jane. The frustration of not being able to do as she wished was levelled into the protagonist’s voice. This, Woolf asserts, was the flaw in her work. She felt that the anger of a woman was able to distort the true and best nature of her writing; and that this was because of the patriarchal society in which these women lived. To put it in Virginia Woolf’s words:
she was thinking of something other than the thing itself.
I’m also reminded of Jo March in Little Women and Good Wives, who wrote ‘thrilling’ stories for the public, rather than what was true to her heart. Even in fictional characters it is easy to see how women were writing only with the limitations that were seen as making it acceptable. But, how does this translate today? Do we still write with limitations?
New Limitations?
Women writers today certainly have an easier time than our predecessors. The quality of her work is no longer established by a male-dominated society, nor is the ability of writing under her own name frowned upon. And yet (and this is not based on gender only) there is a restriction in the honesty of writing that I have seen — and is more openly seen here on Medium.
I’ve seen so many articles about how to write, what to write and the best ways to get noticed, that I see a ‘flaw’ in the ‘how-to’ blog writers. The ‘content’ (and I think that’s an awful term for a writer’s work) being pursued is for audience ratings, rather than for the unique voice that all of us have.
‘Write for the audience’, I have seen.
‘Think about what people want to read’, is another.
And yet, is that the definition of a writer that you want to be?
It does seem to me to be a step backward to placing restrictions on a writer’s voice in order to have published, and accepted, work. And, do readers always know what they want to read? Readers are always looking for something new, with a different viewpoint — another slant of vision. Have you ever read a book different to what you normally like reading, and thought ‘Wow! That was brilliant.’
Let’s Consider Some 20th Century Writers
The 20th century was a time for new writers with new concepts and ideas. They didn’t hide behind a mask of people-pleasing; rather, they addressed issues of the day, changes in society, and wrote in different concepts of thought.
These days we’d call them ‘game-changers’.
For example, George Orwell — his books Animal Farm and 1984 were revolutionary; Jack Kerouac’s counter-culture novel On the Road is seen as the ultimate coming-of-age book; James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novel, Ulysses, challenged the concept of writing a story.
Can you see any of these writers, and many others, writing for an audience?
They became some of the greatest writers of their time because they used their unique thoughts, inspirations and concepts — they wrote honestly, and that’s what made it work.
The only writers who wrote for an audience were pulp fiction writers. And that’s what happened to their books — they were only good for pulping. They were 2 a penny — as cheap as you like for instant gratification — and I doubt you can name these writers.
The best writers are always the ones we remember — that have stood the test of time. These are the ones you will read and reread time and again. The well-thumbed books on the shelf are not old, they are loved and appreciated. That’s the recommendation for a writer’s vision.
Take a leaf out of these famous writers’ books and be honest in your vision, and find the unique voice, the unique writing, and then — and only then — will the satisfaction of publication have true value.
This article was originally published on Medium.
Charlotte Clark 