<P> The £ 500 was just enough to live on without employment but without any extravagance . This (minimal) independent wealth introduces a socio - political element into Woolf's argument which speaks not only to gender dynamics but to divisions in social class . This element of Woolf's argument has been addressed in a number of scholarly and literary attacks . </P> <P> Alice Walker, to the subject of much criticism, demeaned Woolf's essay for its exclusion of women of color, and women writers who do not have any means for obtaining the independence of a room of their own . In In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Walker writes: "Virginia Woolf, in her book A Room of One's Own, wrote that in order for a woman to write fiction she must have two things, certainly: a room of her own (with key and lock) and enough money to support herself . What then are we to make of Phillis Wheatley, a slave, who owned not even herself? This sickly, frail, Black girl who required a servant of her own at times--her health was so precarious--and who, had she been white, would have been easily considered the intellectual superior of all the women and most of the men in the society of her day ." </P> <P> Walker recognises that Wheatley is in a position far different from the narrator of Woolf's essay, in that she does not own herself, much less "a room of her own". Wheatley and other women writers exist outside of this room, outside of this space Woolf sets asides for women writers . Though she calls attention to the limits of Woolf's essay, Walker, in uniting womanist prose (women's writing) with the physical and metaphorical space of "our mothers' gardens", pays homage to Woolf's similar endeavour of seeking space, "room", for women writers . </P> <P> It was adapted as a play by Patrick Garland who also directed Eileen Atkins in its stage performance . The television adaptation directed by Patrick Garland was broadcast on PBS Masterpiece Theatre in 1991 . </P>

Virginia woolf a room of one's ow