What techniques does Virginia Woolf use to pose arguments in A Room of One's Own?

In A Room of One's Own, Woolf is refuting the claim of a male writer that women's biological inferiority explains why they have not produced a body of great literature to rival men's.

Woolf is in a difficult position refuting this argument in the late 1920s. At this point, women had achieved the vote, could attend college, could inherit property, and were entering the job market at unprecedented levels. Therefore, to establish a convincing argument that it was economic inequality rather than innate biological differences that led to women's difficulties producing great literature, she knew she had to establish that the devil was in the details.

Thus, the main technique Woolf uses to build her argument is to accumulate a series of details contrasting men's versus women's situation and to show the obstacles these "details" create in women's lives. She focuses on the lives of privileged women, because she knows that it is privileged men producing most of the "great" literature in her English society.

Students often complain that Woolf's essays seem wandering and longwinded: what is her point, and why doesn't she simply get to it sooner, they ask? There is, however, no shortcut to "getting to" it. As said above, the devil is the details. Woolf therefore describes, for example, the luxurious meal with a fine roast and good wine that the male students at the men's college eat amid comfortable surroundings. She then contrasts it to the austere meal of mutton and water the women eat amid the threadbare surrounding of their women's college. Why is it, she asks, that women's college are so much less endowed than the men's colleges? What difference does it make to a woman's prospects to live in an environment that has to pinch every penny? It is only by showing us in detail the differences with vivid images that Woolf can make her case that women have a rougher time.

Why too, she asks, do all the resources in most families go the men's educations while the women are expected to stay at home and economize so that the men can live well? How can women compete under such circumstances? When do women, Woolf, asks, get their pay-day for all the sacrifices they have made for their brothers?

Having shown all the small ways in which women have to make do with less, she then argues forcefully that women need money and a room of their own to achieve what men have achieved. A room is an image—a thing we can visualize in our minds—and therefore it becomes a powerful emblem of the kind of resources women need.

Through details and images, Woolf slowly but surely builds a persuasive case that women's lack is economical and not biological.

One of the key strategies that Woolf uses to help her arguments in this text is the habit she has of addressing her readers as "you" and anticipating their thoughts and reactions to what she says. This is evident from the very beginning of Chapter One in this text, as she says:

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?

Woolf deliberately strikes up a style that is conversational and at the same time crucial to her argument and way of trying to persuade her audience of the truth of what she says. Woolf, by involving her audience with her argument and anticipating their thoughts shows that she is not presenting herself as some erudite individual and that she is addressing people who have their own thoughts and opinions. For a book that carries a message of equality, the addressing of the audience clearly demonstrates the way that she is not trying to create any distance between herself and her readership. The use of the pronoun "you" to present her arguments greatly helps in this respect.

What types of language does Virginia Woolf use in A Room of One's Own?

Early in the first section of A Room of One's Own, Woolf argues that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write." Here, Woolf puts forward a simple, clear line of argument. Indeed, the simplicity of this argument is indicated by the fact that the title of the book is taken from this particular quotation. The auxiliary verb "must" indicates Woolf's forceful, personal, polemical tone. Woolf uses this same auxiliary verb often, writing, for example, that "fiction must stick to facts" and that "one must submit to the social convention."

In order to make her arguments as clear as possible, Woolf also uses plenty of figurative language. She uses a simile, for example, when she writes that "fiction is like a spider's web," and she uses a metaphor when she writes that "literature is strewn with the wreckage of men." The simile in the first quotation helps convey the point that fiction is comprised of many delicate connections, painstakingly spun by the author. The metaphor in the second quote helps to convey Woolf's argument that literature has for too long, and to its lasting detriment, been dominated by men. These figurative phrases help to convey ideas and arguments to the reader and thus contribute to the forceful tone of Woolf's writing.

The personal tone is also a key characteristic of Woolf's language. In both sections of the essay, there are a number of first-person phrases like "I recollected," "as I had been thinking," and "I reflected." Phrases like these remind the reader that these views are personal to the author and are the product of the author's own experiences and meditations. This is made clear at the beginning of the book, where Woolf writes that upon being asked to write these essays about women and literature, "I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant."