A Room of One's Own, and Three Guineas

I believe one should read this very short book before proceeding with any pre-20th century women's fiction. Virginia Woolf describes in a captivating manner how it was significantly different to be able to sit and write as a woman of those older centuries, than it was as a man. Even the “greats” like George Elliot, Charlotte or Emily Bronte, did not write unimpeded, the way Shakespeare or Tolstoy did -her comparisons, not mine-
“...the overflow of George Elliot's capacious mind should have spread itself, when the creative impulse was spent, upon history or biography. They (Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte and George Elliot) wrote novels however.”
Because even having a room of one's own to use as writing ground, was inconceivable. And even when a written work was completed, by Emily, George, or Charlotte, a big if given all the daily interruptions a woman would encounter, the amount of times she would hide her manuscripts from the eyes of others so as not to be judged or prevented from continuing her work, even then, she could not openly publish it and earn what she rightly deserved. Instead of praise she would expect public shaming and judgement, if the audience found out the work was penned by a “she”.
All this is general knowledge to us now, but it does sit comfortably and permanently in the mind when read through the words of Virginia Woolf. Virginia a woman who, as she herself acknowledges in ‘A Room of One's Own', was also helped by fortunate circumstances to be able to write unimpeded in her lifetime – even if she was simultaneously hindered other factors not discussed in this essay. It is important to have this backdrop in mind when reading women's fiction, because according to her it is not a mere contextual detail, but a central and pervasive aspect of their works. Not that knowing it should alter our appreciation of them, or of any venerated work written by men.