<P> In the essay, Woolf constructs a critical and historical account of women writers thus far . Woolf examines the careers of several female authors, including Aphra Behn, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, and George Eliot . In addition to female authors, Woolf also discusses and draws inspiration from noted scholar and feminist Jane Ellen Harrison . Harrison is presented in the essay only by her initials separated by long dashes, and Woolf first introduces Harrison as "the famous scholar...J---- H---- herself". </P> <P> Woolf also discusses Rebecca West, questioning Desmond MacCarthy's (referred to as "Z") uncompromising dismissal of West as an "' arrant feminist"'. Among the men attacked for their views on women, F.E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (referred to as "Lord Birkenhead") is mentioned, though Woolf further rebukes his ideas in stating she will not "trouble to copy out Lord Birkenhead's opinion upon the writing of women". Birkenhead was an opponent of suffrage . The essay quotes Oscar Browning through the words of his (possibly inaccurate) biographer H.E. Wortham: "'...the impression left on his mind, after looking over any set of examination papers, was that...the best woman was intellectually the inferior of the worst man ."' In addition to these mentions, Woolf subtly refers to several of the most prominent intellectuals of the time, and her hybrid name from the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge--Oxbridge--has become a well - known term, although she was not the first to use it . </P> <P> The narrator of the work is at one point identified as "Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, or Mary Carmichael", alluding to the sixteenth century ballad Mary Hamilton . In referencing the tale of a woman about to be hanged for existing outside of marriage and rejecting motherhood, the narrator identifies women writers such as herself as outsiders who exist in a potentially dangerous space . It is important to note that Woolf's heroine, Judith Shakespeare, dies by her own hand, after she becomes pregnant with the child of an actor . Like the woman in the Four Marys, she is pregnant and trapped in a life imposed on her . Woolf sees Judith Shakespeare, Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, as powerless, impoverished women everywhere as threatened by the spectre of death . </P> <P> In another section, describing the work of a fictional woman writer, Mary Carmichael, Woolf deliberately invokes lesbianism: "Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these --' Chloe liked Olivia ...' Do not start . Do not blush . Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen . Sometimes women do like women ." Woolf references the obscenity trial and public uproar resulting from the publishing of Radclyffe Hall's lesbian - themed novel, The Well of Loneliness published in 1928 . Before she can discuss Chloe liking Olivia, the narrator, has to be assured that Sir Chartres Biron, the magistrate of Hall's obscenity trial is not in the audience: "Are there no men present? Do you promise the figure of Sir Chartres Biron is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell you ..." </P>

Virginia woolf in search of a room of one's own summary