In Virginia Woolf's feminist essay “A Room of One's Own”, Woolf argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” (16) if she wants write fiction of any merit. The point as he develops it is insightful, and much more layered and varied in its implications than it might at first appear. But I wonder if perhaps Woolf hasn't really exploited the full power of her thesis. He recognized the necessity of the financial independence of the writer for the birth of great writing, but he failed to discover the true relationship with the great writing of another freedom; because just as economic freedom allows you to inhabit a physical space, a room all to yourself, so mental freedom allows you to inhabit your mind and body "incandescent and unobstructed". 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 consideration of Woolf's essay and also the recent trend of feminist criticism, one realizes that if women are to do something with Woolf's words; if we want to act accordingly, to write the next chapter of this great drama, we must carry his argument a little further. We must push him to his conclusion to discover that in reality both freedom from economic dependence and freedom from the shackles of mind and body are conditions of the possibility of genius and its full expression; we must learn to 'move within': inhabit and take possession not only of a physical room, but of the more abstract rooms of our mind and body. It is only from this perspective in full possession of ourselves that we can rediscover the unconsciousness of ourselves,...... middle of paper......d imposing figure of a gentleman, whom Milton recommended to my perpetual adoration, a view of the open sky” (34). In this, the message is clear: women's perspective 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 should we allow ourselves to be defined by the prescribed function for our bodies. We should instead transcend the struggle to find our right relationship with men and enter into our mind and body; reclaim them, inhabit them, and from these rooms of ours we should look for our place, our room, our right relationship with reality. Only then will our upward gazes be greeted by a glowing, unobstructed vision of the open sky. Works Cited Woolf, Virginia. A room of one's own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1989.