the title of the essay comes from woolf's conception that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". the narrator of the work is referred to early on: "here then was i (call me mary beton, mary seton, mary carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance)". the two marys were ladies-in-waiting to mary, queen of scots; they are also characters in a 16th-century scottish ballad, mary hamilton, about a lady-in-waiting who is facing execution for having had a child with the king, a child she killed.