A room of their own? : women readers in the Middle Ages

By a ‘room of one’s own’ Virginia Woolf meant a woman’s opportunity to find space, in both the literal and metaphorical sense, in which to cut herself off from daily chores to devote herself to writing. In the historical absence of such space she saw the reason why fewer women authors had been active, certainly before the eighteenth century. My concern is with a much earlier period which she regarded as quite unpromising and with women finding privacy in which to read, although I shall conclude by looking at two examples in which medieval women appear as writers as well as readers, surmounting the obstacles which Woolf thought they could not overcome.