While reading A Room of One's Own, I discovered that Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf are quite similar. Woolf states, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." (4) Towards the beginning of Dillard's The Writing Life, the author explains how she moved to single small room cabin on a remote island to finish a book. Both women initially believed that having a room of one's own would be beneficial for their writing.
Woolf and Dillard share similar thoughts about the end product of a work as well. Dillard expresses her thoughts about an ideal vision for her work. She then continues to explain that her final product never turns out to be what she had pictured in the first place. "It is rather a simulacrum and a replacement." (18) Woolf believes that pressures from society hinder writers' works. In order to produce an income, writers must fabricate literature that is pleasing to their audience. When it comes down to it, novels and histories are not a necessity. Once the writer has struggled dealing with society, Woolf feels that, "if anything comes through in spite of all this, it is a miracle, and probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it was conceived." (54)
