Enough Money, a Room and an Androgynous Mind of Ones Own - Essay Example

Woolf acknowledges that things are changing and that even more significant changes are in the offing. However, influential men like Mr. Oscar Browning still make pronouncements such as "the best woman [is] intellectually the inferior of the worst man." She shrewdly analyzes such remarks to be the consequence of man's insecurity when challenged by modern woman's demands for 'equality.' Woolf herself subscribes to a more balanced point of view, expressed in the last section of the book:All this pitting of sex against sex . . .

all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides', and it is necessary for one side to beat another side . . .. As people mature they cease to believe in sides . . .Mature, creative people, Virginia Woolf feels, would rather harness the constructive power of spiritual co-operation than expend their energy in confrontation or competition.Men and women as individuals can attain heights of creative achievement only when the masculine and the feminine parts of their personality are in harmony, as was the case with Shakespeare.

Similarly, men and women in society can realize their full potential, and help human civilization and culture come into full flower only in co-operation and harmony with each other. Woolf would advocate, instead of the unrealistic ideal of 'equality,' the celebration and the marriage of differences and the concept of spiritual co-operation between men and women to foster the "unity of mind" needed for artistic creation, and all civilization.