Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them."" (Woolf, 4) .
The word "but" might be instructive for suggesting something about the subject of the book itself. "Butting in," one might say, is very much a focus of this work. The reason that a woman needs a room of her own to make fiction is because privacy and solitude - keeping the world from "butting in" - are necessary for creation. And the reader, at various points, is presented with what it's like to be "but in on," perhaps most powerfully in the first chapter.
As the narrator, goes "fishing" in her mind while walking around Oxbridge, she is confronted with a face of horror and indignation. Why such an expression? The answer is simple:". he was a Beadle; I was a woman. Only the [male] Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me."" (Woolf, 6) No harm was done, the narrator says, but still, because of the interruption, her little thought had gone into hiding. Such is the effect of having someone "but in on" you. One might assume that, if such interruptions are the common lot of those who don't have a room of their own and a sufficient income, it might well have an effect on their ability to create. Woolf points out, at the opening of the work that this is really the only truthful opinion that she has to offer about women and fiction. What she can talk about, however, is how she came to her view about the privacy and the money - and this provides the work's structure. .
A Room Of One's Own, one might say, is a kind of cultural odyssey where one can experience someone moving past different landmarks toward a settled place, or in this case, a settled opinion. And following her through the journey - noting her stops and the different ways that her experience can be interpreted. For as one comes to see early on, the journey through the waters of Women and Fiction is a complicated one in part, because the subject is open to various meanings.