"Mais la seule vie qui soit passionnante est la vie imaginaire.
Une fois que les roues recommencent à tourner dans ma tête,
je n'ai presque plus besoin d'argent ni de robe, ni même d'un buffet, pas plus que d'un lit à Rodmell ou d'un sofa."
Virginia Woolf, extrait du "Journal d'un écrivain"
Why did men drink wine and women water ? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor ? What effect has poverty on fiction ? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art ? — a thousand questions at once suggested themselves. But one needed answers, not questions ; and an answer was only to be had by consulting the learned and the unprejudiced, who have removed themselves above the strife of tongue and the confusion of body and issued the result of their reasoning and research in books which are to be found in the British Museum. If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth ?
Thus provided, thus confident and enquiring, I set out in the pursuit of truth. The day, though not actually wet, was dismal, and the streets in the neighbourhood of the Museum were full of open coal-holes, down which sacks were showering ; four-wheeled cabs were drawing up and depositing on the pavement corded boxes containing, presumably, the entire wardrobe of some Swiss or Italian family seeking fortune or refuge or some other desirable commodity which is to be found in the boarding-houses of Bloomsbury in the winter. The usual hoarse-voiced men paraded the streets with plants on barrows. Some shouted ; others sang. London was like a workshop. London was like a machine. We were all being shot backwards and forwards on this plain foundation to make some pattern. The British Museum was another department of the factory. The swing-doors swung open ; and there one stood under the vast dome, as if one were a thought in the huge bald forehead which is so splendidly encircled by a band of famous names. One went to the counter ; one took a slip of paper ; one opened a volume of the catalogue, and the five dots here indicate five separate minutes of stupefaction, wonder and bewilderment. Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year ? Have you any notion how many are written by men ? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe ? Here had I come with a notebook and a pencil proposing to spend a morning reading, supposing that at the end of the morning I should have transferred the truth to my notebook. But I should need to be a herd of elephants, I thought, and a wilderness of spiders, desperately referring to the animals that are reputed longest lived and most multitudinously eyed, to cope with all this. I should need claws of steel and beak of brass even to penetrate the husk. How shall I ever find the grains of truth embedded in all this mass of paper ? I asked myself, and in despair began running my eye up and down the long list of titles. Even the names of the books gave me food for thought. Sex and its nature might well attract doctors and biologists ; but what was surprising and difficult of explanation was the fact that sex — woman, that is to say — also attracts agreeable essayists, light-fingered novelists, young men who have taken the M.A. degree ; men who have taken no degree ; men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women. Some of these books were, on the face of it, frivolous and facetious ; but many, on the other hand, were serious and prophetic, moral and hortatory. Merely to read the titles suggested innumerable schoolmasters, innumerable clergymen mounting their platforms and pulpits and holding forth with loquacity which far exceeded the hour usually alloted to such discourse on this one subject. It was a most strange phenomenon ; and apparently — here I consulted the letter M — one confined to the male sex. Women do not write books about men — a fact that I could not help welcoming with relief, for if I had first to read all that men have written about women, then all that women have written about men, the aloe that flowers once in a hundred years would flower twice before I could set pen to paper. So, making a perfectly arbitrary choice of a dozen volumes or so, I sent my slips of paper to lie in the wire tray, and waited in my stall, among the other seekers for the essential oil of truth.
What could be the reason, then, of this curious disparity, I wondered, drawing cart-wheels on the slips of paper provided by the British taxpayer for other purposes. Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women ? A very curious fact it seemed, and my mind wandered to picture the lives of men who spend their time in writing books about women ; whether they were old or young, married or unmarried, red-nosed or hump-backed — anyhow, it was flattering, vaguely, to feel oneself the object of such attention provided that it was not entirely bestowed by the crippled and the infirm — so I pondered until all such frivolous thoughts were ended by an avalanche of books sliding down on to the desk in front of me. Now the trouble began. The student who has been trained in research at Oxbridge has no doubt some method of shepherding his question past all distractions till it runs into his answer as a sheep runs into its pen. The student by my side, for instance, who was copying assiduously from a scientific manual, was, I felt sure, extracting pure nuggets of the essential ore every ten minutes or so. His little grunts of satisfaction indicated so much. But if, unfortunately, one has had no training in a university, the question far from being shepherded to its pen flies like a frightened flock hither and thither, helter-skelter, pursued by a whole pack of hounds. Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women, chased my simple and single question — Why are some women poor ? — until it became fifty questions ; until the fifty questions leapt frantically into midstream and were carried away. Every page in my notebook was scribbled over with notes. To show the state of mind I was in, I will read you a few of them, explaining that the page was headed quite simply, WOMEN AND POVERTY, in block letters ; but what followed was something like this :
Condition in Middle Ages of,
Habits in the Fiji Islands of,
Worshipped as goddesses by,
Weaker in moral sense than,
Idealism of,
Greater conscientiousness of,
South Sea Islanders, age of puberty among,
Attractiveness of,
Offered as sacrifice to,
Small size of brain of,
Profounder sub-consciousness of,
Less hair on the body of,
Mental, moral and physical inferiority of,
Love of children of,
Greater length of life of,
Weaker muscles of,
Strength of affections of,
Vanity of,
Higher education of,
Shakespeare’s opinion of,
Lord Birkenhead’s opinion of,
Dean Inge’s opinion of,
La Bruyere’s opinion of,
Dr Johnson’s opinion of,
Mr Oscar Browning’s opinion of,…
Here I drew breath and added, indeed, in the margin, Why does Samuel Butler say, ‘Wise men never say what they think of women’ ? Wise men never say anything else apparently. But, I continued, leaning back in my chair and looking at the vast dome in which I was a single but by now somewhat harassed thought, what is so unfortunate is that wise men never think the same thing about women. Here is Pope :
Most women have no character at all.
And here is La Bruyère :
Les femmes sont extrêmes, elles sont meilleures ou pires que les
hommes —
a direct contradiction by keen observers who were contemporary. Are they capable of education or incapable ? Napoleon thought them incapable. Dr Johnson thought the opposite. [* ‘“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” . . . In justice to the sex, I think it but candid to acknowledge that, in a subsequent conversation, he told me that he was serious in what he said.’ — BOSWELL, THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES.] Have they souls or have they not souls ? Some savages say they have none. Others, on the contrary, maintain that women are half divine and worship them on that account. [* ‘The ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women, and accordingly consulted them as oracles.' — FRAZER, GOLDEN BOUGH.] Some sages hold that they are shallower in the brain ; others that they are deeper in the consciousness. Goethe honoured them ; Mussolini despises them. Wherever one looked men thought about women and thought differently. It was impossible to make head or tail of it all, I decided, glancing with envy at the reader next door who was making the neatest abstracts, headed often with an A or a B or a C, while my own notebook rioted with the wildest scribble of contradictory jottings. It was distressing, it was bewildering, it was humiliating. Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.
I could not possibly go home, I reflected, and add as a serious contribution to the study of women and fiction that women have less hair on their bodies than men, or that the age of puberty among the South Sea Islanders is nine — or is it ninety ? — even the handwriting had become in its distraction indecipherable. It was disgraceful to have nothing more weighty or respectable to show after a whole morning’s work. And if I could not grasp the truth about W. (as for brevity’s sake I had come to call her) in the past, why bother about W. in the future ? It seemed pure waste of time to consult all those gentlemen who specialize in woman and her effect on whatever it may be — politics, children, wages, morality — numerous and learned as they are. One might as well leave their books unopened. But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbour, have been writing a conclusion. I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X engaged in writing his monumental work entitled THE MENTAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL INFERIORITY OF THE FEMALE SEX. He was not in my picture a man attractive to women. He was heavily built ; he had a great jowl ; to balance that he had very small eyes ; he was very red in the face. His expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing some noxious insect as he wrote, but even when he had killed it that did not satisfy him ; he must go on killing it ; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation remained. Could it be his wife, I asked, looking at my picture ? Was she in love with a cavalry officer ? Was the cavalry officer slim and elegant and dressed in astrakhan ? Had he been laughed at, to adopt the Freudian theory, in his cradle by a pretty girl ? For even in his cradle the professor, I thought, could not have been an attractive child. Whatever the reason, the professor was made to look very angry and very ugly in my sketch, as he wrote his great book upon the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women.
Traduit de "A Room of One's Own"
Traduction: Joy Instead
"Mais, me direz-vous, nous vous avons demandé de parler de femmes et de fiction, qu'est-ce que cela a à voir avec une chambre à soi ? Je vais essayer de l'expliquer. Lorsque vous m'avez demandé de parler de femmes et de fiction, je me suis assise sur les berges d'une rivière et ai commencé à m'interroger sur la signification de ces mots. Peut-être signifient-ils simplement quelques remarques sur Fanny Burney; quelques autres à propos de Jane Austen; un hommage aux Brontës et l'évocation du Presbytère Haworth sous la neige; si possible quelque chose de spirituel à propos de Miss Mitford; une allusion respectueuse à George Eliot; une référence à Miss Gaskell et j'en aurai fini. Mais, à y regarder de plus près, les mots n'ont plus paru si simples. Le titre "femmes et fiction" pourrait signifier, et peut-être avez-vous fait en sorte qu'il signifie: les femmes et leurs façons d'être, ou encore: les femmes et les romans qu'elles écrivent; ou bien: les femmes et les romans écrits à leur propos, ou il pourrait signifier, en quelque sorte, que ces trois acceptions sont inextricablement liées et que vous attendez de moi que je les aborde de cette façon.
Mais, quand j'ai commencé à considérer le sujet sous ce dernier angle, qui semblait le plus intéressant, je me suis vite aperçue qu'il présentait un inconvénient majeur: je ne serai jamais capable d'en arriver à une conclusion, je ne parviendrai jamais à remplir ce qui, je l'accorde, est le premier devoir d'un conférencier: vous confier, après une heure à discourir, une pépite de pure vérité à emmailloter entre les pages de vos carnets et à garder sur le dessus de la cheminée pour toujours. Tout ce que j'étais capable de faire était de vous offrir mon opinion sur un point mineur: une femme se doit d'avoir de l'argent et une pièce à elle si elle projette d'écrire de la fiction; et cela, comme vous le constaterez, laisse irrésolu le grand problème de la vraie nature de la femme et de la vraie nature de la fiction. Je me suis soustraite à mon devoir quant à trancher ces deux questions - les femmes et la fiction demeurent, pour moi, des problèmes irrésolus.
Mais, pour m'amender, je vais faire ce que je peux pour vous montrer comment j'en suis arrivée à ce point de vue concernant la pièce et l'argent. Je vais développer en votre présence, aussi pleinement et librement que possible, le fil des idées m'ayant menée à penser cela. Peut-être, si je mets à nu les idées et préjugés derrière cette assertion, vous découvrirez qu'ils exercent une certaine influence sur les femmes et sur la fiction. Dans tous les cas, quand un sujet est hautement source de controverse - et toute question relative au sexe l'est - on ne peut espérer dire la vérité. L'on ne peut que montrer comment on en est arrivé à tenir l'opinion que l'on tient. L'on ne peut que donner à son auditoire la chance de tirer ses propres conclusions de l'observation des limites, des préjuges et des singularités de celui qui s'exprime. La fiction, ici, contiendra probablement plus de vérité que de fait. De ce fait je propose, usant de toutes les libertés d'un romancier, de vous raconter l'histoire des deux jours ayant précédé ma venue ici - comment, courbée sous le poids du sujet dont vous m'avez chargé les épaules, je l'ai jaugé et l'ai inclus à ma vie quotidienne. Nul besoin pour moi de dire que ce que je m'apprête à décrire n'a pas d'existence; Oxbridge est une invention; ainsi que Fernham; "je" n'est qu'un terme commode pour quelqu'un n'ayant pas d'être réel. Les mensonges couleront de ma bouche, mais il se pourrait que quelque vérité y soit mêlée; c'est à vous de chercher cette vérité et de décider si oui ou non une partie mérite d'en être conservée. Si la réponse est non, vous jetterez le tout dans la corbeille à papiers et oublierez tout cela.
J'en étais donc là, (nommez-moi Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael ou comme bon vous semble - cela n'a aucune importance), assise sur les bords d'une rivière il y a de cela une semaine ou deux, sous le doux temps d'Octobre, perdue dans mes pensées. Ce joug que j'ai évoqué, "les femmes et la fiction", le besoin d'en arriver à une quelconque conclusion sur un sujet donnant naissance à toutes sortes de préjugés et de passions, courbait ma tête jusqu'au sol. A droite et à gauche, des buissons de toutes sortes, dorés et pourpres, brillaient et semblaient même enflammés. Sur la berge opposée, les sols pleuraient, en perpétuelle lamentation, les cheveux aux épaules. La rivière reflétait ce qu'elle voulait de ciel, de pont et d'arbre brûlant, et, une fois l'étudiant ayant plongé ses rames dans les reflets ils se refermaient, complètement, comme s'il n'avait jamais été là.
L'on aurait pu rester indéfiniment là, perdu dans ses pensées. Une pensée - pour lui donner un nom plus ronflant que celui qu'elle méritait - avait mené sa barque au fil du courant. Elle tanguait de-ci, de-là, minute après minute, entre les reflets et les algues, laissant l'eau la soulever et la noyer jusqu'à ce que - vous connaissez la prise - la matérialisation soudaine d'une idée au bout de la ligne, les trésors d'attention à déployer pour s'assurer qu'elle est bien prisonnière, les précautions à prendre pour l'en extirper. Hélas, étendue sur le sol, comme mon idée semblait petite et insignifiante; le genre de poisson qu'un bon pêcheur remet à l'eau pour qu'il grossisse et soit un jour bon à cuisiner et à manger. Je ne vous importunerai pas avec cette pensée à présent, quoique, pour peu que vous y regardiez de plus près, vous la découvrirez de vous-mêmes au fil de la discussion qui va suivre.
Quelque petite qu'elle fût, elle possédait néanmoins l'apanage mystérieux de son espèce - ayant réintégré sa place dans mon esprit, elle devint d'un coup très excitante et importante; et, tandis qu'elle me titillait et se dérobait, réapparaissant comme un éclair de-ci, de-là, déclencha un tel tumulte d'idées qu'il me fut impossible de demeurer assise tranquille. C'est ainsi que je me retrouvais à traverser un carré d'herbe à toute vitesse. Instantanément, une figure masculine surgit pour m'intercepter. Je n'ai pas compris tout de suite que les gesticulations de cet objet de curieuse apparence, avec son manteau déchiré et sa chemise de soirée, m'étaient destinées. Son visage exprimait l'horreur et l'indignation. L'instinct plus que la raison vint à mon secours: il était Appariteur, et moi une femme; là était le gazon, et là le chemin. Seuls les lettrés et leurs pairs avaient droit d'être ici; pour moi, c'était le gravier. Ces pensées ne prirent qu'un instant. Comme je regagnais le chemin, les bras de l'Appariteur s'abaissèrent, son visage reprit sa quiétude habituelle et, quoique le gazon soit plus agréable que le gravier, il n'y eut pas grand mal de fait. La seule chose que je puisse retenir contre les lettrés et leurs pairs de quelque Université qu'il se soit agi est que, en protégeant leur gazon, roulé depuis 300 ans sans interruption, ils ont forcé mon petit poisson à aller se cacher".
But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction — what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own ? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney ; a few more about Jane Austen ; a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow ; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford ; a respectful allusion to George Eliot ; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write ; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light.
But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point — a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction ; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions — women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.
But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial — and any question about sex is that — one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here — how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence ; Oxbridge is an invention ; so is Fernham ; ‘I’ is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them ; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it.
Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please — it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought — to call it by a prouder name than it deserved — had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until — you know the little tug — the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line : and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out ? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked ; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.
But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind — put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important ; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle ; I was a woman. This was the turf ; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here ; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding.
