Virginia Woolf short : A society

Virginia Woolf's 1921 short story A society depicts a group of women who start questioning their role as child bearers that have been prevalent in society up to this point in history. 

They wonder what men have been doing, whilst women had been bearing and raising the children that become these men. 

On this premise, this group of 6 or 7 women  form their society, vow not to have children until they can find out if there are any good men out there, good men who write good books, and so validate their role as mothers. 

They further decide to meet regularly and discuss their findings, as each goes to a different place in order to investigate the matter. 

I really like how Virginia have composed this short story which touches women's societal role, and questions various assumptions and relationships between the two sexes. To this day - nearly a century later - these issues are still valid as there is a huge pressure on women to be mothers, even those who wish they wouldn't be. Evidently, it's far easier nowdays for a woman to decide and actually live as a free woman, but there are still many expectations and pressures. 
Which means that in spite of some progress in this matter, Virginia Woolf's short story has been timeless. 

The narration is told in the past tense, as right from the first line ''this is how it all came about'' announces that the narrator recalls the events that lead from one point, to the creation of the society, and unfolds the story in the next dozen or so pages -depending in which book you are reading it.  I read it in this collection

Virginia also names each of the women composing this group in a very gradual manner and the ending is so typical Woolf... as the group meets once again and has to decide of its future as well as how to raise their daughters (if they had any, evidently), and this is the whole point of Virginia's statement. 

A society is definitely one of her best short stories and I so fully immersed in it that I made abstraction of my cell phone ringing over and over (didn't even notice it).

I read it just after the much shorter ''a haunted house'', with 3 swans having a meal ouf of the grass in the local garden...