In Virginia Woolf's feminist essay “A Room of One's Own,” Woolf argues that “a woman should have money and a room of her own” (16 ) if she wants to write fiction of any value. The point as she develops it is insightful, and its implications are far more complex and varied than might first appear. But I wonder if Woolf didn't really exploit the full power of her thesis. She recognized the necessity of the financial independence of the writer for the birth of great writing, but she did not succeed in discovering the true connection with great writing of another freedom; For just as economic freedom allows each person to inhabit a physical space – a room of one’s own – so too does mental freedom allow one to inhabit one’s own “incandescent and unfettered” mind and body. Woolf seems to believe that the development and expression of creative genius depends on the mental freedom of the writer (50), and that the development of mental freedom depends on the economic freedom of the writer (34, 47). But after careful examination of Woolf's essay and also of the recent trend in feminist criticism, we realize that if women want to do something with Woolf's words, it is up to them to do so. do something. if we are to act on it – to write the next chapter of this great drama – we must take his argument a little further. We must push him to his own conclusion to discover that in fact freedom from economic dependence and freedom from the fetters of mind and body are conditions for the possibility of genius and its full expression; we must learn to “move in”: to inhabit and take possession not only of a physical room, but also of the more abstract rooms of our minds and bodies. It is only in this perspective in full possession of ourselves that we can rediscover the unconsciousness of ourselves,...... middle of paper ......of the imposing figure of a gentleman, that Milton recommended to my perpetual adoration, a view under the open sky” (34). In this, the message is clear: women's perspectives on the world should not be framed by the figure of a man; we should not allow the limits of our minds to be dictated to us by a patriarchal social structure, nor allow ourselves to be defined by the function that is prescribed to our bodies. Rather, we should transcend the struggle to find our right relationship with men and focus on our own minds and bodies; regain possession of them, inhabit them, and from these rooms which are our own, we must seek our place, our room, our right relationship to reality. Only then will our gazes upward be greeted by an incandescent, unobstructed view of the open sky. Works CitedWoolf, Virginia. A room of your own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and company, 1989.