I want to tell you that “A Room of One’s Own” fits
perfectly, perfectly, into our discussion
of voice this year. Woolf boils the whole subject of women’s writing into 2
points: to write, one must have five hundred a year and a room of one’s own. Reading Woolf renewed my growing conviction of the great difference opportunity can make in the
lives of separate persons.
These words—king, beggar, wife, husband, rich,
impoverished, educated, illiterate—merely describe opportunities given or
denied, they do not speak of innate qualities or potentialities. I want to
highlight this idea of opportunity because I feel that it is an essential
component in finding one’s voice. To have a voice, sorry, I should say, to use one’s voice, one must have the
opportunity to do so.
Everyone has a voice, but not everyone receives the tools
to develop it, to give it form and meaning in language's soft vowels and scraping consonants. Those who are seldom heard--the poor, the marginalized, the illiterate, and the oppressed--have lacked opportunity, but are not voiceless. As Americans, we wonder why children in Asia tend to be better at math. Is it because American children are by nature stupid and slovenly? Are they less
intelligent, or just more inclined to the arts? No. It is because children
in Asia are given the opportunities necessary for excellence in numbers. We
ask why, in America, white children in wealthy families are more likely to be
successful than the ethnic inhabitants of inner cities. It's because
of opportunity. Wealthy children tend to receive the opportunity of a better education,
and are therefore more likely to find, and use, their own voices.
Woolf notes how difficult it is for a woman to write while
acknowledging that her predecessors—her mothers and grandmothers—spent their lives crying out in child bed and otherwise living as mute ornaments to their husbands’ glory. Woman, Woolf
notes, lacks the strong, certain tapestry of letters that man has claimed as part
of his rightful dominion over the world. She cannot look back on thousands of
years, reciting genealogies of female poets and playwrights. She instead looks
back on a liturgy of housekeepers, servants, slaves, and sexual objects—possessions
prized or disdained. Woman writing must, in hearing her own voice, recognize
the silence of her sisters throughout time and space.
Because I have not been forced into one kind of life, and
because I am not even among those who fought for the opportunity to speak, I get to be the Woman writing. I am able to use my voice, and I know what it sounds
like.
I am blessed. This is simply another way of saying that I have been given the opportunity to use my voice.
Let's summarize. We have seen that to use one's voice one must first be cleansed of iniquity, otherwise all that one speaks is filth in the eyes of God. And to use one's voice, one must have a private space, and five hundred a year.
