Hi, My Name is...?

The narrator in Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" asks readers to "[...] Call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please--it is not a matter of importance" (pg. 5). Barely skimming the surface, a reader may be tempted to think that the name is of no importance because the issue of women having "money and a room of her own to write fiction" (pg. 3) is the matter of centrality.

There is clearly some type of universal identity that is being aimed for. Woolf creates a narrator who is the voice of all women who desire to have a literary voice. Without a distinct name or identity Woolf creates an enigmatic woman. Traditionally, specific names and identities have been the beginning of getting to know a person. Without the narrator having a specific name an air of mystique is left and leaves readers to focus more on "the true nature of women and the true nature of fiction" (pg.4).

With calling her by any name one pleases, the universality of the message Woolf tries to mold and construct has its foundation laid. This is not merely the plight of the narrator or of Woolf personally, but a struggle of all women who would like the prescribed resources to write solid, unequivocal fiction. So, address the narrator by any name you would like, maybe even your name if you desire to write fiction. You would not be wrong in doing so; she is you.