Radio Drama - A Room of One's Own
Don’t
miss Linda Marshall Griffiths’ evocative adaptation of Virginia Woolf's seminal
work, starring Indira Varma and directed by Nadia Molinari.
It’s
1928. A woman stands by a river pondering the opening sentence of an essay on
female creativity. As she walks across the grass she is told to keep to the
path – only male scholars are allowed on the hallowed turf. She is then barred
entry to the college library where ladies have to be accompanied by a fellow or
possess a letter of introduction.
Undeterred,
the woman makes her way to lunch - “at least in the college dining room I am
allowed” - and describes the extravagant meal in detail. In contrast the meagre
fare in the women’s college disappoints: plain gravy soup, overcooked greens
finished off by prunes and custard! Worse, they’re served water rather than
wine. She decamps to her friend Mary Seaton’s room to drink whiskey and bemoan
the disparity in funding for women’s education.
This
is the central thrust of Woolf’s essay. How can women find time to write when
they are expected to marry and give birth? Poverty and dependency impoverish
the mind. Next stop is the British Museum to discover “why women are poorer
than men.” The history books are dominated by male voices whose prejudice is epitomised
by Professor X’s assertion that women are of “mental, moral and physical
inferiority.”
In
a neatly dramatized interlude, Woolf imagines what might have happened if
Shakespeare had had an equally gifted sister. She concludes that she would have
been denied the opportunity to write or display her talent. Her ambition would
have been swiftly curtailed by pregnancy. The average Elizabethan woman was
absent: “in the kitchen chopping up suet.”
Even
when women started to write in the 19th century they often published
anonymously. Jane Austen did not have a study and had to work in the sitting
room. Female characters continued to be defined by their relations to men
rather than each other.
Woolf’s
conclusion resonates today: a woman needs security - a room of her own and a
lock on the door - for creativity to flourish.
BBC Radio 4, May 31, 3.00pm
Originally published by Camden New Journal