A DESK OF HER OWN

 A DESK OF HER OWN

Cambridge, United Kingdom, October 1928

    In October 1928, Virginia Woolf was invited to give a lecture at Newnham College (my College in Cambridge), a speech which was later published in the book A Room of One’s Own. In its opening chapters, Woolf recounts how she decided to walk along the grass, always following the curve of the River Cam, until she found a place to sit. All the land around river, to the very last blade of grass before reaching the riverbank, belongs to the Colleges: St. Catharine’s College, King’s College, St. John’s College, and so forth. Virginia Woolf, therefore, found herself sitting on someone else’s property. To sit on the grass, one needed to belong to the College that owned it—a privilege unattainable for her at the time.

    With the exception of Newnham and Girton, women were not admitted to the Colleges. Newnham College was founded in 1871 in a small rented house by Henry Sidgwick, where five students studied what were called Lectures for Ladies—courses of a lesser caliber than those offered by the Colleges with access to the prized lawns. Women were barred from Cambridge’s main libraries, forcing Newnham to purchase books dispersed across the city’s various departments. To this day, Newnham has the most extensive library among Cambridge Colleges. Worse still, even as women completed Newnham and Girton’s increasingly rigorous and equivalent courses, they were not officially recognized by the University. Cambridge refused to grant them valid degrees; the only evidence of their studies was their signature of the College Roll, a ceremonial document which we still sign at Matriculation. Multiple petitions for official recognition of women’s degrees—in 1881, 1897, and beyond—were all rejected.

    Despite the lack of acknowledgment, Newnham graduates contributed profoundly to society. During the First World War (1914–18), 600 alumnae worked on the frontlines as doctors, nurses, and interpreters. Yet, even after such efforts, Cambridge refused to recognize Newnham’s degrees in 1921. Meanwhile, Rosalind Franklin, a Newnham alumna, discovered DNA’s double helix—though Watson, Crick, and Wilkins took the credit and the Nobel Prize. Newnham would have to wait until 1964 for her student, Dorothy Hodgkin, to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (the only english woman to our days to have won a Nobel prize in sciences).    

    Cambridge officially acknowledged women’s degrees attributed by all-female Colleges, such as Newnham, only in 1948, and it was not until 1970 (when our parents were already born) that other Colleges began to admit women.

    But back to 1928. Virginia Woolf was very far away from having the right to rest on the riverside grass. She recounts that, as she sat, an extraordinary idea struck her. Yet as soon as she opened her notebook to write it down, a Porter appeared, scolding her for being there. By the time she reached home, the idea had vanished, never to return—which inspired her famous assertion: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Concord, Massachusetts, June 1868

    On the other side of the world, Louisa May Alcott was lucky enough to have a room of her own. Alcott, the author of Little Women, wrote a book central to my childhood (and to that of so many others). I remember the book sitting on my bedside table—a tale of four sisters, their talents, mishaps, ambitions, and dreams. Jo (Alcott herself) wanted to be a famous writer, scribbling day and night. Amy yearned for recognition as a painter. Meg dreamed of motherhood, and Beth of helping others and playing piano.

    Alcott’s real-life home, Orchard House, is in Concord, just twenty minutes from Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the late autumn, the trees are still burned with fiery shades of red and gold. At the foot of the hill of Walden Pond, on the bank of Concord River, one can almost hear Emerson, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott (Louisa’s father) diving into the water after their long metaphysical discussions. Concord was the literary heart of pre–Civil War America, and these three friends were great transcendentalist philosophers. Thoreau wrote poetry and prose, and in his free time led groups of local children on woodland adventures, teaching them the names of birds and trees, which he knew like no one else. Other times, he would invite groups of children onto his boat, and off they would go on excursions. Among those children was Louisa May Alcott, who did not attend school, and who was thought at home by her father, with whom she read Dickens, by Emerson, who introduced her to Goethe in his library, and by Thoreau in their walks. Later in life, she would bitterly complain that she could not express herself better or more deeply because she never had a formal education.

    Bronson Alcott was a pedagogue with modern ideas, and he loved his daughters dearly. Noticing that Louisa loved reading, delving into books, scribbling in the margins of pages, pulling books off the shelves, and making piles of them, he gave her a room and a desk of her own—a rarity for a daughter at the time. Amy, an aspiring artist, was allowed to draw on the walls, which still display her artwork. When Louisa was ill, May painted flowers on her bedroom walls, unable to bring fresh ones daily. But while Louisa had a room—the first part of Woolf’s equation—she still lacked the rest. The idyllic domesticity scene described in the Little Women's book conceals some poverty and struggle, which indeed existed. As Bronson refusal to take on less intellectual work, there was often no food in the house, and debts piled up.

    Louisa May Alcott was a paragon of virtue, with a strong missionary spirit and an immense will to serve. At home, she helped with everything that needed to be done, and in her spare moments, wrote plays and newspaper columns, earning a few coins—though not many, because women weren’t supposed to write, and the payment for her work was proportional to the value others gave to it. Since her family needed a breadwinner more than someone to help with chores, she went to Boston in search of work. She became a seamstress at a school, working ten hours a day, and then also a teacher, though she hated teaching and deeply wished to write so well that she would never have to teach again. She wrote during breaks—few and far between—after sewing and teaching. When she finally had a few days to write, she locked herself in her room in what she called a “vortex” and poured her whole heart and soul into her writing until she finished. It was the need to earn money that led her to publish her first book, Flower Fables, from which—despite everything—she received a very modest sum (about thirty dollars), even though around 1,600 copies were sold. In a letter to her sister, Louisa wrote: “The poet writes that life is a struggle, a dream, and also ‘a bubble.’ In that case, I would feel grateful if a playful little angel could burst this bubble with their childlike joy, and if the magnanimous bubble-blowing company could make me another one, with more soothing properties, a little less salty water, and less empty, more radiant, with less tendency to slip away.” But that same year, her sisters wrote that Louisa’s arrival for Christmas brought news, joy, and much laughter, and that she kept them all entertained. Even while in Boston, she was the first to arrive when they needed her and tirelessly cared for her mother when she became ill.

    When the war began recruiting, Louisa spent all her time sewing, producing over five hundred blue shirts for soldiers’ uniforms. Later, she devoted her free time to studying medical manuals and learning how to treat bullet wounds so she could be chosen as a nurse. She ended up in one of the most dangerous places in Washington, but she faced the challenge with determination, both maternal and fierce. Pneumonia, typhoid fever, diphtheria, amputations—she never stopped and was immediately put in charge of supervising forty beds. The task she found most difficult was responding to letters received by men who hadn’t survived to read them; when she could, she read Dickens to the soldiers. She worked tirelessly, enduring all the tasks without complaint, and even while ill, she managed to save three men at death’s door. Eventually, she was diagnosed with typhoid fever and taken home. At the time, the treatment consisted of administering mercury, which caused her fatigue, headaches, and leg pain for the rest of her life.

    Still, Louisa, on whom her family depended, could not stop. After much writing and publishing (often anonymously), she was invited to be the editor of a children’s magazine. Writing Little Women was an incredibly hard task for Louisa, who said she managed to work for hours on end only through strict discipline and great effort, to finally deliver the book she had committed to, under pressure from her editor and her own father. The book initially didn’t succeed because the editor didn’t identify with a book aimed at a female audience. It was only when the editor’s niece “stole” a copy and became extremely excited following each chapter as they were released that he realized the book might succeed. Having given her the green light to continue, Louisa wrote 402 pages between June 1 and July 15. The book sold like few others, and it is said that when Louisa went to the publisher, having heard nothing more about the manuscript, the editor, overwhelmed by the sheer number of boxes he was handling, told her without turning around—“Go away!” The country went into a frenzy over the work. The book sold two thousand copies in days, and by the end of the year, forty-five thousand copies had been sold. Fans appeared at her door, in what the museum's owners describe as a phenomenon more impressive than J.K. Rowling’s. With the money, she made significant repairs to the house and paid for her sister’s painting course in Paris.

    Louisa May Alcott would have always been an extraordinary sister and daughter—it’s a matter of character—but I feel sorry that her success was so hard-won and grueling. I wonder what extraordinary books I might have had on my bedside table if Louisa had been able to study more, and if, having been recognized earlier, she had had more time and opportunity to write with calm and the freedom to choose her subjects. Perhaps, in fact, it’s more accurate to ask what books I might have now on my bedside table, rather than what books I would have had as a child, because Louisa’s writing, had she been able to study, might have been more like that of Emerson, Bronson, and Thoreau, rather than that of a children’s author—much as I love Little Women.

Concord, Massachusetts, November 2024

    If today I am writing from the other side of the world, it is because Newnham College still exists, and by investing heavily in women’s education, it is generous with scholarships and opportunities. It is known for being the College with the largest, brightest rooms and the most well-kept gardens. Virginia Woolf is right, and although I am wasting time writing on this blog instead of adding more lines to my doctoral thesis, I know I would one day regret not having recorded these memories. I dedicate them to Virginia Woolf, to Louisa May Alcott, and to so many others who fought so that I could have my room and my scholarship, and to my family, to whom the idea of a College for women would never have occurred—because they would simply never assume a reality in which such a College would be needed. We are what others expect of us, and Bronson expected something from the desk he gave as a gift.

    I also write because the rights we have are not as secure as we think they are, because all these achievements are recent, and because those who lack memory lose their sense of risk and awareness of another reality, and thus the ability to value what they have.

    P.S.: I didn’t make anything up. Louisa May Alcott’s life is described in the book by Matteson, which I bought at the exit of Louisa’s house in Concord, about the story of Bronson Alcott. I bought the book because I realized, and found it interesting, that father and daughter share the same birthday (November 26), just like my mother and I (November 8).