Woolf makes the decision to discuss the status of women in the educational system. She makes the decision to communicate things as they are in the educational system. She crafts a thesis statement with a narrow focus but declares that she will exercise all the rights and freedoms a novelist has. She does not, in fact, possess the freedom and authority of a writer. If she had been granted those rights, she could have demonstrated her freedom using a thesis statement that is full. Woolf bases her thesis on the idea that through her reflections, it will be comprehended. We know that a thesis statement should be the guide of all that should be done in the entire work.
Woolf, the narrator, sits on the bank of a river located at Oxbridge. She can attend the university because it is fictional. The Oxbridge university explores Oxford and Cambridge universities using fiction. The narrator reflects metaphorically using the activity of fishing. She lets a line down the stream with the aim of catching a fish. A fish, in this case, is an idea about the subject of women and fiction. She wants an idea that will make a woman liberate herself from fiction and face reality. However, the attempt to tug an idea is thwarted by a university security guard. The security guard represents the ignorant members of the universities who do not appreciate ideas of women. Fiction in this context is what women hope that it would be accomplished although reality speaks otherwise. The narrator says that for a woman to write about fiction, she must have money and her room. Money and room symbolize freedom. Any attempt of the woman to generate an idea is deterred by her surrounding evidenced by the security guard. The guard says that a woman is not allowed to walk on grass but the gravel path. The gravel path is the reality of a woman in this society, and the grass is the fiction. The fiction which she hopes to come true.
The narrator also looks into an essay that is written by Charles Lamb about the restructuring of Oxbridge. She wishes to go through the manuscript that has an idea of how the university can reform. However, the information is safe guarded and so is access to the universities. The narrator is advised that she cannot access the library without a fellow of the college. The narrator feels excluded from the odd fellows of the university. The fellows in the university have a way that is not understood by regular life. The narrator vows in her anger that she will never ask for help from the university. She is disappointed that the government builds the university with so much money, but she cannot get any help from it. The narrator recalls that the building used great labor, materials, and money to finish and maintain the whole institution.
The narrators’ attention is distracted by a cat without a tail in the wealthy environment. The truncated animals trigger a thought in the mind of the narrator. The sight of the animal symbolizes that something is lacking in the university environment during lunch time. The narrator says that the kind of poetry done in this luncheon is not even understood by those who are listening to it.
The narrator targets to find the absolute truth about women. She realizes that truth does not exist in the first place. The narrator states that truth is simply an opinion or ones’ own experiences. She argues that such controversial topic does not motivate one to tell the truth but to show how they came up with an opinion. The narrator says that one can prove an opinion, but it would be complex to prove a truth. She says that it becomes easy to manifest truth through fiction since it is likely to contain more facts. Woolf uses the truncated cat to show that the education system is not complete. She even says that the poems written in this context are compromised regarding what they convey. She compares the poems written before world war one with the present. She concludes that the poems before the war were authentic and they communicated emotions.
The narrator realizes that money is of utmost importance to empower creativity, but she also realizes that women should contend with interruptions. When Woolf is interrupted by a security guard, it is upon her not to give in. This argument partly nullifies her initial principle. The principle that a woman must have room to write about fiction and truth. The financial difference between men and women should not be a reason why women are not doing well. Woolf gets angry when she is told that a fellow in the college must accompany her. In this case, she is more focused on her inferiority than the truth. She holds an opinion that she calls truth. She never asked herself if men followed the same procedure when they wanted to access certain books in Oxbridge.
