£37,318.86p and a Room of My Own

£ 37,318.86p and a Room of My Own

Some of you might kind of recognise this strange statement. You might recognise it more if it said “£500 and a room of her own” and until last week, I wouldn’t have recognised it either but at the age of 50, I have finally “read” Virginia Woolfe’s “A Room of Her Own”. When I say “read”, I really listened to an audio version.

Glorious as it is, she writes as a stream of consciousness with the language structure of a hundred years ago, so I knew I wouldn’t get beyond the first few pages of a printed version. Her book goes way beyond sometimes narrow first wave feminism, digging into some important creative issues for both men and women, but you have to listen with ears that can hear both…

£ 37,318.86p is what £500 in 1929 is worth today, which Woolfe was given a year to live on, freeing her from marrying and working for starters. In the UK right now, the average professional and technical jobs pay around £37,246 a year or £15ish an hour.  Woolfe’s basic point is that to be able to create fully, in her case to write well, this is what a creative person needs. She knew that this money was a privilege and listed the main successful writers of her era, stating only one was from a “meagre means” and didn’t not have the luxury of £500 a year. He died young.

We seem to have this strange image of “successful” artists, who we think  support themselves through their art alone, but often have hidden support behind them. I have even heard these people called “real artists” which makes me want to scream. There seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors about this, so I have taken to asking artists, even if I have only just met them, “how do you support yourself financially?” or I might ask “what job do you do to support your painting?”  or if I know them well “how the f*** do you pay your mortgage?”. It is always the same: “my partner is a doctor/lawyer and they support me” or “my boyfriend works in finance, so I don’t need to “work” or “we are lucky we paid our mortgage off when we left London” or “my parents left us money”. This is fairly common, unless you are selling your work for multiple thousands or millions.  Virginia Woolfe knew how important is was for artists to be financially supported somehow – that 100 years ago and of course, creativity and what it needs, doesn’t change?

Woolfe also talks about protected space and time – that’s the “room of my own”. I laughed out loud when she spoke of women previously writing poetry, instead of long novels, which she put down  to the constant interruptions women have! Although I laughed at this, I also cried a little as I left my easel for the fifth time in half an hour: help needed with essays, dog needing a wee, husband wanting to check my diary, other daughter asking about dinner, phone going, door going…  None of that is particularly new is it? But hearing that little has changed in 100 years, felt sad. Back then this seemed to be a feminist issue, but Woolfe also talks about the masculine and feminine parts of all of us, needing to be recruited if we are to create with the strengths and insights of both.

How I wished I had “read” the in my twenties, again in my thirties and probably a few more times to remind me of her insights, advice and lively words…well they are when read by Tilda Swinton!

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