Virginia Woolf

Despite my love-hate relationship with feminist criticism and the terrible time I had reading Mrs. Dalloway, "A Room of One's Own" won my ever-lasting admiration for Virginia Woolf. It wasn't just her spot-on insight into gender politics and canon construction--though Woolf understood their connection all too well. Rather, Woolf captured my heart when she wrote,

"Thought--to call it by a prouder name than it deserved--had let its line down in the steam. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until--you know the little tug--the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked..."