Rebecca West and the Origins of A Room of One's Own
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12917690 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Douglas Mao (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 186-212 |
| Publication date | 2014-09-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modernist Cultures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1753-8629 • E-ISSN: 2041-1022 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/mod.2014.0083 |
| OpenAlex | W1969870650 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
This essay argues that Virginia Woolf's treatment of the wellsprings of valid art in A Room of One's Own (1929) is significantly indebted to Rebecca West's exploration of similar questions in “The Strange Necessity” (1928). Noting substantial evidence that Woolf was familiar with West's text by the time she wrote Room, the essay observes that both authors argue for the power of material conditions in art-making even as they work to deflect charges of succumbing to a reductive or soul-deadening materialism. In mounting this proactive defense, West relies in part upon a peripatetic narrator whose reflections on art are interwoven with savorings of quotidian experience; Woolf adapts this device to the distinct but cognate purposes of Room
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Literature · Materialism · Period (music · Physics · Power (physics · Soul · Irish and British Studies · Modernist Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |