Inside Our Room

Virginia Woolf

Nearly a century ago, writer Virginia Woolf told readers in A Room of One’s Own that creative women had a problem: Not enough money and not enough locked rooms in which to work.

100 years later, we worry that not much has changed. A Room of Her Own Foundation is dedicated to helping creative women find what they need—money, space, privacy—to be able to fulfill their creative vision.

Background

The famous English novelist and critic, Virginia Woolf, whose stream-of-consciousness technique and poetic style are among the most important contributions to the modern novel, believed that successful women artists in her day were in short supply because they lacked the financial means and the privacy necessary for the creation of their art.

In her view, providing women artists with money meant freeing them "for the power to contemplate.... a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself." She also believed that if women artists were provided with a room of their own consistently, developing the "habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think," then within this present century, "Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down", but only "if we work for her", if we have "that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry."

A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO) is an organization which began spontaneously, with the desire of one woman to help other, less fortunate women in their artistic pursuits. This single woman was joined by other women and men who share a common desire to advance the vision of Virginia Woolf and bridge the gap between the economic reality of deserving, talented women and their artistic vision. Click here to read the story of how A Room of Her Own Foundation was started.