Wall 1 A Reality in the Truth: The Paradoxs Challenge Written by Ashley Wall Nothing has changed since the

age of Virginia Woolf. You are right to raise a brow, this statement is as far from the truth as can be. Rather, practically everything has changed since the age of Virginia Woolf: cars now cost more than two thousand dollars, the Wright Brothers plane can now travel to the farthest corners of the world, and the true art of writing is shared by both genders. In A Room of Ones Own, Virginia Woolf uses the paradox of the incandescent mind and the evolution of the art of writing for the purpose of influencing her audience to seek to discover the ethical importance in removing ones presence from primacy: expressing a permanent truth and leading ones readers to do the same. It is important to understand Woolfs logic because it ultimately challenges both men and women to become, not only acute writers, but actively critical thinkers and strivers for success in all aspects of life. To best understand her logic, Woolf uses the examples of Shakespeare and Jane Austen to explain what she believes an incandescent mind to be; she does this to express the need for such a mind when one attempts to write a true piece of fiction. All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him and consumed, Woolf writes, If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded it was Shakespeares mind (56). By this Woolf is saying that womens hardships and desires get in the way of their writing. Women restrict their writing when they use the art to approach their protests, whereas Shakespeares own grudges and spites are hidden from his audience. In the same way, Woolf describes Jane Austen, [She] wrote as women write, not as men write [She] alone was deaf to that persistent voice, now grumbling, now patronizing (74) Woolf is commending Austen on forgetting the voices which may hinder her, both male and female. Austen could have written herself into her novels, perhaps complaining about the inequality of sexes, but rather she merely created fiction. Virginia Woolf stresses how the art of writing is to illuminate the fiction itself. The characters and emotions within a novel are not supposed to point back to the author, but simply be the components of a piece of writing. In this regard, Woolf shows how having an incandescent mind will shape ones true art of writing. In contrast, Woolf also deems it necessary to include an example of a writer who is not of an incandescent mind, Charlotte Bronte, to explain the problem with manipulating fiction through opinion. While reading Jane Eyre, it seemed to astound Woolf when Bronte left her story, to which her entire devotion was due, to attend to some personal grievance (72). Woolf continues to say Brontes imagination swerved to indignation, leaving the character of Jane Eyre and replacing her with the real Charlotte. It was a flaw in the centre that had rotted [the novel], admonishes Woolf, She (meaning Bronte) had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others (73). Anger, ignorance, and fear are felt by the reader, but these emotions are due to the suffrage Bronte feels of not being able to experience all of which she wishes. Woolf here is showing how the opinion of the author can corrupt the novel, that the integrity of the art is being marred. Without an incandescent mind, the pure act of writing is not capable. Now perhaps you may be asking what is the point in having an incandescent mind; expressing ones opinion is not an unworthy cause for it furthers the process of writing. However, Woolf addresses this question: the final result of having an incandescent mind is that the truth is completely expressed in ones writing and the reader is then challenged to extract what reality is by using his or her knowledge obtained through the reading. Woolf writes, What is meant by reality? It would seem to be something very erratic, very

Wall 2 undependable -- now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now in a daffodil in the sun Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us (108). Thus, Woolf is stating that the art of writing is the authors expression of a truth he or she has experienced. The reality touches the authors mind and fixes upon it, instilling a permanent truth. Once experiencing such a revelation, the author must write it down. Woolf then challenges the authors audience, It is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping (4). In this way, Woolf asserts that reality, though containing a permanent truth, is not fixed. Rather, reality is fluid, being experienced by the reader through the author. In this way reality can change throughout time, evidenced in the evolution of the art of writing. This is what Virginia Woolf considers the most valuable aspect to life. Virginia Woolf successfully uses the paradox of an incandescent mind versus the evolution of the art of writing because she contains both concepts and enables both truths to be understood. The incandescent mind, she explains, is that which allows only the true art of writing to take place. No evidence points back to the authors actual person. In opposite, the art of writing continues to evolve as time passes. Some examples of this evolution are the creation or new genres or increasing numbers of women authors. Especially for female writers, ideas have changed since the age of Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf does not emit an either-or reality, she believes that both truths need to be held. The paradox, in Woolfs explanation, ties neatly together to form a sort of philosophy: to seek out the truth and shape it into a reality. Though it is debatable whether Woolf herself may not have reached her ideal incandescence, she sparked the fire which brought about the evolution of womens writing. Had she never challenged women authors to write, not through their suffrage, but for the sake of writing itself, works such as The Color Purple, To Kill a Mockingbird, and even Harry Potter would not exist. However, the impact on women writers is not the only worthwhile result of Woolfs logic to point out. Womens critical thinking and striving to succeed can be linked to Woolfs belief that a reader must always look for the truth, and find it at all costs. The fact that women have continued to strive to be well educated and critical thinkers proves that reality is always changing; in Woolfs society, strong women such as Sally Ride or Eleanor Roosevelt were inconceivable, but without such women our present-day lives would be incomparably different than what they are now.