In the age of the #MeToo campaign, it is only apt to recall a quote by celebrated feminist author Virginia Woolf, the subject of today's Google Doodle: “Imaginatively, [woman] is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history.”
The quote is from Woolf's 1929 essay A Room of One's Own, which speaks about the importance of women and their lack to access to education in those times.
Woolf, whose 136th birth anniversary is being celebrated by Google Doodle, was a staunch feminist who lent her voice to the movement through her many works. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915 through Hogarth Press, a publishing house that she established with her husband Leonard Woolf. From then on, she wrote many pieces of fiction and short stories. Some of her best known works are Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando .
Woolf is said to have suffered from mental illness most of her life. On March 28, 1941, she drowned herself following a bout of depression at the age of 59. Her last novel was Between The Acts, which was posthumously published.
Woolf’s famous demand on behalf of the female author resonates with women writers even now: “Give her a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speak her mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and she will write a better book one of these days.”
