As the first footnote in this excerpt seeks to explain, in the previous chapter Woolf had sought information about women and fic
tion, and she had gone to the British Museum library to do research, to no avail. So in this section here, she decides to go home and see what she can find on her own shelves. What, exactly, is she looking to learn and what seems to be missing from the historical record? Woolf writes that when looking at history books first and literature second, an "odd monster" (239) emerges – what is this?
Miss Woolf wanted to find the information regarding the Women in Fiction, however she could not find it in the British Musuem library and thus she went home to search out for the reasons why there are a lot of books regarding women written by men and why women writers are non existent in the fiction.
The odd monsters are actually myths and metaphors created by both the historians and writers regarding women which were not accurate at all and does not have any relation with truth.
