ABSTRACT
Virginia Woolf’s famous remark in A Room of One’s Own (1929) that ‘One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well’ may have referred to women’s educational deprivation, but it also points to the very real problem of women’s economic poverty.1 There was a significant increase in the early twentieth century in the numbers of single women supporting themselves financially by taking advantage of the new employ ment opportunities open to them. As I noted in the last chapter, these secretaries, clerical workers and sales assistants often struggled to feed them selves adequately after they had paid their rent. Richardson’s Pilgrimage is an example of how the boarding house room can be a place of independence and freedom but, as this chapter will demonstrate, for older women, particularly those without stable income, the single room can also be a place of uncertainty and insecurity.
