Part 4.  Woolf concludes her speech by raising some important questions concerning the new role of women and the new relationship between men and women.

Discuss the implied meaning:

1.    Those are the questions that I should like, had I time, to ask you. And indeed, if I have laid stress upon these professional experiences of mine, it is because I believe that they are, though in different forms, yours also. 

2.    Even when the path is nominally open--when there is nothing to prevent a woman from being a doctor, a lawyer, a civil servant--there are many phantoms and obstacles, as I believe, looming in her way 

3.    To discuss and define them is I think of great value and importance; for thus only can the labour be shared, the difficulties be solved. 

4.    But besides this, it is necessary also to discuss the ends and the aims for which we are fighting, for which we are doing battle with these formidable obstacles. 

5.    You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men. 

6.    You are able, though not without great labour and effort, to pay the rent. 

7.    But this freedom is only a beginning; the room is your own, but it is still bare. It has to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be to be shared. 

8.   How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it, and upon what terms.

Note: A Room of One’s Own: Considered to be the most persuasive of all feminist literary manifestos, this work deals with the status of women, the difficulties of the woman artist, the future of fiction and women’s part in it. In his article “Habits of Thought” John Burt outlines the main ideas of the book in this way:

 A Room of One’s Ownis primarily about the effects of women’s poverty upon their art, but it is also about growing uneasiness between the sexes…The central argument of the book might be summarized in five theses:

          i.Patriarchal society imposes economic and social restrictions upon women on account of its own need for psychological support.

          ii.These restrictions limit the experience upon which art depends, causing creative women to suffer and depriving the general culture of their contributions.

          iii.As the material condition of women has improved, women writers have emerged, and the integrity of their work, its freedom from the scars and kinks of personal limitations, has risen in proportion to their status.

          iv.The rise of women has deprived the patriarchy of its psychological support, causing uncomfortable relations between the sexes that reflect themselves in the limitations of contemporary art.

          v.When the emancipation of women is complete, a more adequate sexuality and a more adequate imagination, marked by androgyny or sexual openness, must emerge.