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Show PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Virginia Woolf, in her 1928 lectures on women and fiction, later published under the title A Room of One's Own, discussed the fate of women of literary ability, and declared that women must have money and privacy in order to write. Practical impedi ments were imposed on many of them-they married, had chil dren, and had limited access to education and public life. Woolf presented the imagined vision of Shakespeare's sister, a poet who killed herself because of the frustration of unexpressed genius. The lectures were Woolf's way of encouraging the young women-"they seem to get fearfully depressed."? Madelyn Silver read A Room of One's Own and other writ ings that spoke for the political, economic, intellectual, and spir itualliberation of women. Many of these were on her library shelves. But her private diary furnishes evidence that she was frequently haunted by the feeling that her call to wifehood, motherhood, church and community activity deprived her of full expression of her literary talent, which she had dreamed of developing in poetry, short stories, and plays. She found a sub stitute in teaching literature and religion, and in using poetry and short stories to illustrate her class presentations and lec tures. Was the alternative satisfying? Did the joys of wifehood, motherhood and sisterhood counterbalance or only postpone Madelyn's yearning to write? As she strove to meet outside xi |
