The first question from Chapter 5 of A Room of One's Own caught me off guard. I had always believed art to be a form of self-expression, as that is what i had always heard. So, the question of the distinction between the two left me puzzled for a brief moment. Then, it all became more clear when one small word, that set the two words apart, glared back at me. The word "self." If self-expression represents and individual, art must represent a body of people, since they are contrasted.
Clearly, Woolf holds art to a higher esteem than self-expression, but explains that it was all women could do before they were given the proper setting to produce "art." They had not received the proper education, and did not enjoy the same luxuries as did men. When they wrote, what may have been brilliant ideas were clouded with frustration, anger, self-pity... numerous emotions resulting from their ill-treatment. Their writing was merely a sort of venting. It only contained themselves. Such literature is not popular for long, if at all. Who really wants to read the muddled thoughts of one person, disturbed, speaking irrationally. One work of "self-expressive" literature that left me scarred, in that it scarred my memory with its lack of interaction. The Things They Carried contains many short stories, simply created to relieve Tim O'Brien's burdensome memories. Honestly, I didn't really care about his guilt of the man he DIDN'T kill.
Even O'Brien, though, was educated. He had, in his sick mind, the influence of the abundance of authors before him. He was able to speak on behalf of the many other men that served in Vietnam. Woolf's point is that women did not have a history of literature with which they could connect and build on. They were not even able to connect with one another over a fine dining table, as men were. All they had were their minds, what had been allowed to develop, and the aggravation of knowing much of it had not been allowed to develop.
Women authors became artists when their work related to a group, when it was beautiful without their torrent of emotions, it was structured and directed toward a truth. A Thousand Splendid Suns made for the most engaging of reads. It left readers in awe, as it revealed truths about a culture so foreign from us, a culture that had been developed, and the author was able to build off of its history. It extracted emotion from readers, without a distraught writer such as Woolf's Professor Von X. Emotions tend to play a role in creating opinions, rather than facts. Austen and Bronte, according to Woolf, excluded the emotion, created truths. Truths about women. Truths that could be built on. And truths involving many people, are admired by many people. Specimen of art are admired by many people.
