Found: Virginia Woolf

Imagine only just becoming conscious of a prized author after a lifetime of reading! An author already widely renowned and read, but by others, not you. That is what has happened. It is like soaring above the clouds to find her, to add to a beloved author list, with an open field of yet unread fiction. And it is important to this essay that the author was a woman.

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 and lived until 1941. She was the benefactor of a learned upbringing, including being home-schooled, and intellectual co-nurturing in marriage. She became a reviewer for the London Times Literary Supplement, and then novelist and essayist, with more than twenty volumes published. She and her husband founded the Hogarth Press, which printed works of hers, as well as those of others, including those of T.S. Eliot and E.M. Forster. Virginia Woolf did not lack for wide acclaim and recognition even in the first half of the 20th century as a woman writing in a “man’s world.” How could she be missed in a lifetime of reading?

Among her works is “Orlando,” first published in 1928. It is as good a place as any to start a Woolf journey one imagines, because the story is so relevant today, and the prose is so delightful. The story takes place in several ages, beginning with the Elizabethan. It is whimsical, humorous, mocking, and, above all, creative. Without giving away the magical and fanciful storyline too much, it is enough to say that the book is a philosophical reflection about the roles of women and men in society, and how clothes and mannerisms bear on them. There are some wonderfully reflective lines.

“The man has his hand free to seize his sword; the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders. The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion. Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same too.” Elizabethan times and forward, remember, as written for 1928.

And to that point, when Orlando lives first in men’s attire, and then is reborn and clothed as a woman: “Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf [the same well-formed calf as seen previously in his manly guise]. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth.” “’I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,’ Orlando thought.”

Thereon the storyline hangs in all its imaginative clarity. A woman author toying with gender differences in a world dominated by men in positions of power, playing with that thought as she transforms Orlando magically from a prince of power and wealth, including power and sway over women, to a princess. And only after being deeply in the rapture of a her, one however who is not swayed by “him” for long. He has become a princess who is fussed over by men, and mulling over love relationships as a woman.

As I said at the outset, now that Virginia Woolf has been “found,” I am so pleased that there are more than twenty of her novels and books of essays ahead of me. You might be too, and the WLN catalogue has many of them for you.

More of Virginia Woolf to come!