SparkNotes for A Room of One's Own is at

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/roomofone ... ntext.html

I find this essay impossible to read because upfront it's thesis is false: Money is not a precondition for literary success, although it may be a precondition for the Bloomsbury life. Shakespeare began with nothing.

Further, Woolf neglects to say that women dominate in writing fiction because of their superior ability in portraying social relationships. Most best sellers are written by women, and this has always been true. One counter example: Louisa May Alcott began poor and made a fortune, and she is only one of many financially successful women writers of that time.

Wikipedia has a long list of successful women novelists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_novelists
Category:Women novelists

Tom

Thanks for the link. Wow, thats a long list! The essay, though the thesis may not be totally relevant, it was something Woolf was trying to prove. In Orlando she was trying to prove that one is not always comfortable in the skin they are given.

It seems to me that with the relationship with Sasha, Orlando is trying to escape from who and what he is... yet, with the thaw, and the Russian ship sailing away and Sasha not meeting him to run away... he realizes that there is no escape from oneself. I think that's coherent... the thought occurred to me in the middle of the night Tuesday, and this is the first chance I've had to share it.
Lauri

I like your observation Laurie; it does seem like that, and it fits in with the idea of his aimlessness in trying to find who he is, trying to find a spiritual comfort as well as a physical comfort in his life.

I want to join in on this discussion but I'm wondering if I will have time enough to order and then read the book, and if anyone will still be interested in discussing it....

pandora wrote:I want to join in on this discussion but I'm wondering if I will have time enough to order and then read the book, and if anyone will still be interested in discussing it....

Pandora, Orlando is available for free online:

http://www.booktalk.org/read-orlando-fo ... t5281.html

Thomas Hood wrote:A Nest of Reptilian Humanoids

Carly ought to be here. Orlando is a product of the Bloomsbury Group. I had no idea how predatory, deceitful, and venomous these people were -- all of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsbury_Group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Apostles

http://www.malcolmingram.com/sex.htm

Well, I wanted to read something different and learn things. The philosopher G.E. Moore provided the intellectual defense for Bloomsbury decadence:

. . .what made Principia Ethica so important for Bloomsbury was Moore's conception of intrinsic worth. For Moore intrinsic value depended on an unanalysable intuition of good and a concept of complex states of mind whose worth as a whole was not proportionate to the sum of its parts. The greatest goods for Moore and Bloomsbury were ideals of personal relations and aesthetic appreciation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsbury_Group

Tom

CARLY'S here, Tom!

Just checked in here today - I'm so wrapped up in War and Peace that I get frustrated when a 'BOOK' isn't ready in audio version at Libra Vox . . . I'm using text too (of course), but I'm addicted to listening to the audio at the same time as I'm reading.

Thought I'd start this book and discussion as a little distraction.

Anyway, I am curious . . . why are you identifying this reptilian thing (Moore and Bloomsbury) . . . is this something we talked about?

Some philosophy or ethic I was on my soapbox about? I tend to forget things these days - gonna' be 65 in December, and you know how it is, eh?

Got that 'old people's disease, but I don't remember whatcha' call it.

(that's a joke . . . don't worry - I'm ok!)

Anyway, I'm going to be the oddball here . . . I'm going to talk about the story as I read it.

It's a fantasy, obviously, and I don't really care what rivers were frozen over at what time. I don't care about proving whether the author was right or wrong, or what she had in mind 'sexually', 'psyche-wise', 'social-wise'.

It's just a story to me - a fictional fantasy, so the author can tell me any lies she pleases.

My thoughts as I'm reading . . .

Gee, I'd love to have peacocks in my gardens - noisy buggers, I know that. Especially when the males are calling for their mates . . .

AYYYYYYYYYYY EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

We hear them every spring when we go down to see the animals at the park zoo here.

At the Toronto Metropolitan Zoo, they let them wander around loose - you can't eat in peace; they're at your feet constantly, mooching food.

They don't look so good when they're molting either.

But they are such lovely birds.

Anyway, that was my first thought as I started this chapter . . . better than dwelling on the shrunken heads, I guess.

.................................................

So are we to understand that the images of his family were etched on the window panes? Or is he imagining these faces?

.................................................

There's so much colour used here . . . the reds, greens . . . violet! The writer seems to like violet colours. Good colour . . .

.................................................

. . . a hand, he guessed, attached to an old body that smelt like a cupboard in which furs are kept in camphor . . .

Great metaphor! I often wondered how to describe that old woman scent.

.................................................

'This', she breathed, 'is my victory!'

I love the way she uses 'flowers and weeds' in parallel with 'girls and women'.

It may have been Doris, Chloris, Delia, or Diana, for he made rhymes to them all in turn; equally, she may have been a court lady, or some serving maid. For Orlando's taste was broad; he was no lover of garden flowers only; the wild and the weeds even had always a fascination for him.

...............................................