s I write this, the Oscar-winning movie “The Hours,” starring three remarkable actresses playing women desperately seeking happiness, is in theaters. Using Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway,” which follows one day in the life of a 1920s London socialite, as its reference point, the film gets at the heart of daily existence and the meaning that we each carve out of the time that is given us.

            In it, Julianne Moore plays a depressed housewife and mother contemplating suicide in a suburban tract house in 1949 Los Angeles; Meryl Streep is a frenetic, present-day New York book editor, trying through sheer force of will and mock gaiety to inject a former lover who is dying of AIDS with the will to live; and Nicole Kidman transforms herself into the brilliant and suicidal author Virginia Woolf, battling depression as she writes the book upon which this movie is based. Each, in her own good time, comes face to face with the realization that, as Virginia Woolf wrote in another book, “It is much more important to be oneself than anything else.” That’s not always easy to do. Discovering who we are and what we do best is half the battle. Watch “The Hours,” then read “A Room of One’s Own,” from which that quote was taken.

It is in “A Room of One’s Own,” written three years after she finished “Mrs. Dalloway,” that Woolf made the statement for which she is, perhaps, most famous: “A woman must have money and a room of her own….” She was talking about women who want to write, but it applies to all women and rings as true today as it did back in 1929. Woolf’s idea of enough money was “five hundred a year.” Taking inflation into account, that figure might be $50,000 today—and let’s make that “a house of one’s own,” while we’re at it.

In the MARCH/APRIL issue of MAKING BREAD, we tell the stories of women who are working hard, from rooms of their own, to be true to themselves. In our “Biz Whiz” feature, psychologist Allison Acken takes a page from Virginia Woolf’s book to exhort women on the importance of money. She believed so strongly in getting women to focus on financial security that she decided to write a book about it—then had to find a way to get it published on her own. Any aspiring writer can learn from her experience.

In “Why More Women Should Get Involved in Politics,” an extraordinary woman and role model, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, tells how she became the first African-American woman to be appointed to the House Ways and Means Committee—the committee that controls the purse strings of the Federal Government. Mighty big purse strings! “Women have to learn to ask for what they want,” she says. And she challenges every one of us not just to get a job—but to create jobs for other women.

Two writers who call themselves “The Spiritual Chicks” (Virginia would have loved them) suggest that being grateful for what you have may be the first step to getting what you want, in “How Fortunate Are You? The Answer Might Surprise You!” And in our Female Finance column, “The Rules of Disengagement,” our resident expert tells how to get everything you want and need in a divorce settlement. Sometimes it means giving up the house. Be sure to read it to find out why.

Public-relations veteran Rosemary Rys, who has mastered the art of networking like no one else I know, shares her secrets in “Network to Improve Your Net Worth,” proving that sometimes you have to get out of that room of your own to get noticed.

Victoria Secunda shares “My 5 Biggest Money Mistakes” to help you save enough money to pay for that room of your own. And in her "Funny Business" column this month, she takes a poke at a Brit who’s in a class apart from Virginia Woolf—Wallis Simpson, a.k.a. the Duchess of Windsor. The Duchess’s often-quoted recipe for success: “You can never be too thin or too rich.” The Duchess could not have gotten by on $500.

In “Do 2 Part-Time Jobs = 1 Full-Time Job?” Patricia Schiff Estess does the math and tells how one woman made it all add up for her. It’s a solution that might work for you, if you’re looking for work. If it’s your husband who’s out of a job, you’ll want to read Marcia Eckerd’s  "Working Mom’s Shrink" column, “Could Your Relationship Survive on One Salary—Yours?”

Throughout this issue, we hope you’ll find both inspiration and ideas to help you pay for a room of your own. “Face the fact that there is no arm to cling to, that we go alone,” Virginia Woolf cautions in “A Room of One’s Own.” It’s a wonderful book and one that every woman should have on her bookshelf in her own “room of her own.”  

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Gail Harlow is the Founding Editor of MAKING BREAD. Send your comments, questions and suggestions to gail@makingbreadmagazine.com.

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