A few weeks ago I ran a workshop entitled ‘Orlando’s Sisters’. During it we had a discussion about Vita Sackville-West, the inspiration behind Woolf’s Orlando, and also Radclyffe Hall, whose semi-autobiographical Well of Loneliness was banned in 1928 – the same year in which Orlando: A Biography was published. The library holds one of these banned first editions.
We cut up and decorated different words or labels others and ourselves have used to describe Virginia Woolf and tied them to pieces of fruit.These words included: ‘Waves’ ‘Introspective’ ‘The Subconscious’, ‘Public Intellectual’, ‘Woman’, ‘Letter Writer’, ‘Eclipse’, ‘Childless’, ‘Modernist-Edwardian’, ‘Stream of Consciousness’, ‘Public Speaker’, ‘Sapphist’. Some words we decided not to use. How do we define others – people like Virginia Woolf – who we only know through their writing and their portrayal in films and books?
Recently I re-read A Room of One’s Own (1929). In it Woolf describes not being admitted into an Oxbridge library as “ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.”
This makes me think about the Advocate’s Library in Edinburgh where I worked for a short time. This was a very old law library which had really big old tomes that I had to re-shelve by climbing up a narrow wooden ladder. There was also a room with portraits of legal worthies which I was told had until only recently, women had been allowed to enter. I only went in this room once or twice and, when I did, I felt like I was trespassing. It also made me think about archives – it is still common practice for archives to be appointment only and open only to bona fide researchers who have letters of introduction.
What barriers are there for women today for accessing culture and having a space in which to think, read and write? How can women get to know other women, women’s culture, writings, ideas and history? What about lesbian history?
“For if Chloe likes Olivia and Mary Carmichael knows how to express it she will light a torch in that vast chamber where nobody has yet been.” (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929)
We have the lesbian archive here – and it’s not just the information that is in it that is important; it is the shared space in which to encounter and shed light on the books, papers, oral histories and ideas that is important.
