A Room of One's Own

In her 1929 essay of the same title, Virginia Woolf famously described the importance of having "a room of one's own." She was describing the personal, financial, and poetic autonomy necessary for a women to write fiction, but really the same holds true for any repeating, life-long endeavor-- including the life of faith, the raising of a family, or dedication to any long-term creative project.

In Life After Life, the residents' rooms represent the entirety of their personal space: the winnowing down of a lifetime and various households into whatever will fit by a hospital bed. A Sunday school class visits Pine Haven and suggests the residents name their rooms "like you might a home at the sea or a bedroom in a bed and breakfast" (p. 125), and the residents follow suit, choosing names from "Camelot" (Marge) to "The Cell of Hell" (Stanley, of course.)


Small Drawing Room by Marc Chagall, 1908

Honestly, though, this section is a little sad. These people are decidedly not in a home at the sea or a B&B, as Rachel's wry choice of "My Apartment" points up. However, the larger question of having a little patch of somewhere to call one's own-- no matter one's age or how limited one's circumstances-- is certainly valuable.

Do you have a "room of your own?" Is it somewhere you will visit this summer? Is it a place you hope to have throughout your life, or is it something more temporary?