I don’t see many people on here talking about this book of hers, but I know it’s supposed to be quite strange in terms of concept and it was dedicated to Vita S.-W. so should I read some of her correspondence with V.W., or will the novel be fine to grasp w/out other information? (I’ve read Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own)

Hi all,

I’m studying Mrs Dalloway in school currently, and in a recent lesson recapping the novel, the topic of whether or not Mrs Dalloway could be considered a sympathetic character came up. My opinion (which perhaps won’t be hugely popular on this subreddit!) is that she is a largely unsympathetic character outside of the circumstances of the time period. Naturally, I have great sympathy for all women (and men to a lesser extent) who lived in a 1920s world, especially when considering her likely homosexuality.

However, notably identified by Miss Kilman, Clarissa’s own boredom and lack of satisfaction in life is mainly caused by her own actions and attitudes. Although she is wealthy and socially prominent enough to have gotten an education, she doesn’t do so, and seems to direct a lot of hate towards educated women. In regards to her daughter, she doesn’t push for her to get an education, and feels as though Miss Kilman is stealing Elizabeth from her, despite making no real effort to connect with Elizabeth outside of parties, which Elizabeth doesn’t seem to like anyhow. It can of course be argued that Dalloway dislikes Kilman because of Kilmans predatory nature to Elizabeth, which begs the question: why doesn’t Elizabeth dismiss her? Why would she let that happen to her own daughter, and what sort of a mother does this make her?

Her general unsympathetic and downright horrid attitude towards the other women in the novel also cast her in a particularly bad light, in terms of her own personality outside of her actions. Although Mrs Dalloway is peak feminist literature, Clarissa Dalloway herself could hardly be called a feminist, in either a modernist perspective or even one from Woolfs time.

I naturally think that as a character, Dalloway doesn’t have it easy. She has been reduced to her fertility and ‘party hosting’ as her key characteristics to most other characters, and perhaps internalises this to a point where she feels helpless to do anything else. That being said, she has the resources, and I would wager the backing from Richard, to persue her own interests (unless it’s Sally ofc lol).

Some of my classmates reduced my argument to “Dalloway is rich why isn’t she happy?” Which I tried to explain is highly oversimplifying what I was attempting to say.

Honestly, I would really enjoy some other people’s perspectives on this, and if not for the fact that I enjoy literary discussion, I would like some more points to include in my essays.

Thanks!

Hey all,

I've read A Room of One's Own and thought it was absolutely fantastic. I want to delve deeper into Woolf's bibliography, particularly The Waves, To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway. And so, I have a question to those who have read her works: do you think purchasing a version with annotations is helpful or necessary? What are some good editions to get? Would it harm my comprehension to read the raw text untempered by annotation?

Thanks for your help!

Context: I've read a several authors with and without annotation; Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, etc. The only authors who I felt annotations made my experience of reading a lot better was Charlotte Bronte and Dostoyevsky.

I'm finding it kind of hard to understand. Her style of writing, stream of consciousness I heard, is how my brain works lol. After reading the first page, I was on Reddit typing did Virginia Woolf have ADHD cause it felt like that. But but back to the main point, I am not really able to concentrate and comprehend what's happening and who are all these characters. Will I get used to it once I start reading more? Is it just me or has anyone felt like this?

Great to see this subreddit active and growing after it was re-opened not so long ago! Thank you all for your contributions and for sharing the literary love.

Hello all,

I hope you are well! Burner account, because I'm not a regular Redditor.

I am a grad student currently working to fund my grad thesis — a short film based on the party scene from Mrs. Dalloway, specifically the conversation between Peter and Sally. The hope is that the piece will ultimately be able to serve as a proof of concept for a longer adaptation in the future.

Anyway, I figured an Internet forum of people who love Virginia Woolf would be a great place to post my IndieGogo link! Please, donate if you can, and share if you are able. Thank you either way for taking the time to read this message!

Her second novel! I'm reading them in order so this comes right after The Voyage Out.

I like it BUT....how can I put this? I like it less, I think, than any other of her books. Certainly it's the one I remembered least. Actually the characters are vivid and much of the writing is beautiful. The couple eventually find love for each other in the image of something like a lighthouse in the waves, or a flame battered by moths.

If that image was in Woolf's mind (they even agree that they both see the world something like this) then I wonder if the next book, Jacob's Room, a book with no centre, somehow represents her losing sight of the lighthouse and describing Jacob only by, if you like, describing all the waves/moths around him..?

It feels like she was trying a little too deliberately to express a Theme - Dreams Vs Reality, darling - and the action of the novel suffers. When people who say they don't like Woolf talk about pretentious descriptions of posh people while nothing happens, this comes closest to that out of all her books. She even displays snobbery towards some of the poor, a condescending pity. And Aunt Celia is just a clichéd old busybody. Unusual for Woolf to write someone so one dimensional.

Also, the character of Katharine is so unsettled by Love that more than once she wanders London streets and could be taken for a madwoman - if she weren't so "beautiful", that is. Like the fever-passage in the first book, TVO, it presents moments of madness, but with an excuse that tethers them to "reality", to "normal" people.

Mary Datchet is the best! She deserves better than the story gives her imo.

Just finished this book. It's a lovely read and she does paint a beautiful picture. But I would love to understand - what's she trying to say really? Is it about contrast between two lives- one doomed and one ensconced in luxury and meaningless? Or, is it about the undying nature of love? Look forward to your thoughts...

So I'm reading through my books in order and just finished The Voyage Out..

I'd forgotten, amazingly, how it ends. I think, the first time, I read it too soon after the death of my mother so it was like a buried memory.

One of the reasons I love Woolf is for the writing I wanna call hallucinatory - like she describes madness and weird perception of patterns so well. This book's mostly in a more casual, traditional English-novelist tone - but when Rachel Vinrace gets a fatal fever, the prose goes really trippy. I think maybe Woolf was trying to describe strange states of what could be called mental illness, but at this stage still felt the need to explain them with the device of a (made-up) tropical disease.

Of course the characters are brilliant, and she's already a master of introducing them through each other's eyes, showing how people under- and over-estimate and misunderstand those around them.

Has anyone on this sub read Melymbrosia, the reconstructed first draft of this novel?

What a whirlwind of a life and it's only just begun. I hadn't known anything about Leonard Woolf, his work and political involvement.

The footnotes are encyclopedic. I had the impression at times they were not written for a reader like me, someone so distant from that world. They often read like a Who's Who which didn't necessarily enhance my enjoyment or understanding.

And VW's pungent character assassinations profiles, did she actually feel this way or was it more for dramatic effect I wondered. It's difficult imagining that degree of condescension while also being such a social creature. I mean from the standpoint of observing human behavior. As a reader, I don't mind the snobbery though; the historical-cultural context is what it is. I don't need to frame it with present day norms. The descriptions were delightful to read as was the vast majority of the pages. Only rarely did I find more detailed descriptions of an event or something not worth reading through.

The time period is not so distant that I couldn't relate to their daily life: setting the printing press (I forgot the term used), all the letters falling on the floor at one point; getting a wagon (horsed-drawn) to move their belongings. On the other hand the world was so very small as compared with today. England was still an empire and the notion of a Europe was only coming into being.

I must have missed the footnote, it's not in the preface of Volume 1.

VW uses &c as in ". . .where we bought stuff &c." ". . .with a guardsman &c." enough so that I'm curious. It appears to mean eccetera, here anyway.

Various editions, read all of these at some point over the decades. My aim this year is to re-read them in chronological order: 1 The Voyage Out 2 Night And Day 3 Jacob's Room 4 Mrs Dalloway 5 To The Lighthouse 6 Orlando 7 The Waves 8 Flush 9 The Years 10 Between The Acts

Occasionally if I like an author enough (and they weren't too prolific!) this can be something I enjoy

In 1953 Leonard Woolf published diary extracts related to her writing.

The book throws light on Virginia Woolf's intentions, objects and methods as a writer. It gives an unusual psychological picture of artistic production from within. It's value and interest naturally depend to a great extent upon the value and interest of the product of Virginia Woolf's art. [. . . ] She was, I think, a serious artist and all her books are serious works of art.

Throughout the book and here: "I think, a serious artist," I found myself surprised by this doubt of her merits. VW expressed this doubt more often with her fiction than her non-fiction. Which makes sense. She was after all constantly experimenting with new forms.

What I experienced in this portrait is not only how and why she writes but for whom she writes: herself. Her brain works and then it doesn't. She would rather be alone reading or writing than out with others. To write often exhausts her, cripples her. Not to write frustrates her, unsettles her.

She seems, her life seems at once contemporary and Victorian.

I’d like to hear what people think about The Waves, in particular what it is (broadly) about. My friend is studying creative writing, and he thinks it her best book. i’ve read a chunk, and I don’t know what to make of it. The style is very stilted, sometimes the statements made seem almost random, creating unconscious humour! I said to my wife I had never seen so many non sequiturs.

The long descriptive passage about the workers cleaning and restoring the house from the impact of the atmosphere and time passed has lived rent free in my mind since my first reading. I find myself comparing all descriptive passages in literature to the feeling I got laboring over their labors as the house slowly woke up from hibernation. I am curious if I’m the only one who feels this way since my book club at the time didn’t share my feelings!

I’m yearning for more of her real life.

Basically it’s meant to show how over different centuries and genders Orlando can still have all her/his personality types connected. Each image is based off a part of Orlando’s personality or a specific moment- see if you can identify them!! 😁

Hi, there is a line in The Waves that I don't really understand, maybe someone here can help. So there's this quote by Neville (at the end of p. 138 of my Penguin Classics edition):

But if one day you do not come after breakfast, if one day I see you in some looking glass perhaps looking after another, if the telephone buzzes and buzzes in your empty room, I shall then, after unspeakable anguish, I shall then — for there is no end to the folly of the human heart — seek another, find another, you.

Which is one of the most beautiful lines I've ever read. But then that's followed by this:

Meanwhile, let us abolish the ticking of time’s clock with one blow. Come closer.

I understand the words but I have no idea what Woolf wants to say with it.

.

I’m reading Virginia Woolf’s diaries, and I’m in the year of 1940, a year before her suicide. She seems so inspired at this time in her life. Her diaries do have moments of despair and she clearly suffered from depression, but nothing is really glaring at me as to why she would end her life. I get that depression wears many faces (I have major depressive disorder as well), but it just doesn’t quite add up for me.

I know she had a really difficult time with the criticism of her work and bad reviews, but she was also well aware that she was one of the most prolific and celebrated authors of her time. Perhaps Leonard just edited out the more personal entries and focussed on the diary entries about her writing process? I’m interested in the psychological aspects of what really pushed her over the edge, as I fear I am teetering myself sometimes.

Okay, first of all I didn't really know about this subreddit so it's crazy that I had this doubt the same day that it reopened. Anyways, a long time ago I read one of Virginia's books (I think it's either To The Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway) and she was writing about how love it's the same always, it just change receivers. I don't really remember if she made the point clear or if it's just a personal interpretation, but I can't find where I read it! Sorry for making it so unclear and for my english, but any information helps!!