A Room Of One’s Own Funny

Virigina Woolf would approve, I hope

The subject of creative freedom is something I have thought about most of my adult life. Reading A Room Of One’s Own, by Virgina Woolf was pivital for me; I first read it in the early 2000’s. It was one of the books that made me dive deep into what I and other women creatives do, and why. I drew this around that time.

Woolf’s essay — published in 1929 and based on a series of lectures at two women’s colleges she delivered in Cambridge — argued that women need space and money to create. In her time, most women did not have their own rooms for creating (other than perhaps kitchens and sewing rooms), nor did many of them control the money in their homes. She meant space literally, and I believe figuratively. Creativity requires an ability to shut out distractions that do not let you find your true thinking and your pure creativity. Our culture is good at distracting us, such that we don’t know who we are. We need to listen to our minds.

That’s been my fascination, and the motivation behind researching cartoonists and humorists who are women. How can they block out the noise (which is often sexist, misogynistic and racist) and speak about what they want to say? Humor is very dependant on the culture, and it has to be understood by others in order to “work.”