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Bridgewater Review

Volume 13 | Issue 1 Article 14

Jan-1994 Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Barbara Apstein Bridgewater State College

Recommended Citation Apstein, Barbara (1994). Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?. Bridgewater Review, 13(1), 26-28. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol13/iss1/14

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. /lustration by Mercedes Nuflez

26. Bridgwaur Rtv;tw WHO'S AFRAID UIRGIN IR WOO LF? OF a CULTURAL COMMENTARY by BARBARA APSTEIN

"\VTho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf pillows, tote bags and sweat­ These were precisely the subjects W Woolf? Thirty years shirts, as well as a "personal journal" Woolf had addressed in 1928. She had ago, chose this whimsi­ with a photograph of a girlish Woolf argued that women's writing is differ­ cally mystifying tide for what was to on its cover ("with Virginia Woolf ent from men's in fundamental ways become one of the best-known plays overseeing your effons, how can you and that "it is useless [for women] to of the 1960's. What was there to be go wrong?"). Last year, a new women's go to the great men writers for help, afraid of? At that time, Woolf was rock group chose the name however much one may go to them known primarily as a modernist writer "Shakespeare's Sister." for pleasure." Because Woolf believed who pioneered the stream-of-con­ That Virginia Woolf's name that "we think back through our sciousness technique. Her were has become widely known is probably mothers if we are women," she sought densely wrinen, poetic, and demand­ due le~s 'to her novels than to two lec­ to identify a tradition of women writ­ ing of readers, although perhaps less tures she delivered at the women's col­ ers. In the 1970's, A Room of One's "fearsome" than the work of such con­ leges of Cambridge University in Own became a basic introductory text temporaries as T. S. Eliot, October, 1928. The lectures didn't in Women's Studies courses. The and Ezra Pound. Albee's play, despite attract much attention at the time; anthologies of literature by women its title, had nothing to do with Woolf according to some reports, Woolf which ~egan to appear in print were or her writing, but with the bitter spoke softly and was hard to hear. A guided by Woolf's analysis; in one of domestic warfare of a couple locked in year later, A Room ofOne's Own, the them, The Norton Anthology of a love-hate relationship, played mem­ published text of the lectures, sold Literature by Women, A Room is orably in the movie version by fairly well. Although steady sales con­ acknowledged to be "the first major and . tinued, the book would not reach its 'achievement of feminist criticism in Today Woolf's novels, especial­ huge potential audience for another the English Language." By 1991 A ly and Mrs. forty years: A Room was full of .RQ..Qm was so widely known that a Dalloway, are standard in any study of provocative ideas whose time had not one-woman stage performance, with modernist literature, and discussions yet come. playing Woolf, had a of her work flourish in academic jour­ During the decades that fol­ successful run in , New York nals. But a lively interest in Woolf also lowed, Woolf's reputation as a and Boston. The proliferation of "Of exists outside the universities, which is grew steadily, but her feminist writ­ One's Own" titleS attests to the surprising for an author who ~ssumes ings, including A Room, received very Widespread influence of the : one such a high degree of literary sophisti­ little attention. Some critics even felt of the first academic studies of litera­ cation and attentiveness in her readers. that her feminist ideas marred her ture by women, A Literature of Their Sales of books by and about her have "creative" work, making it too politi­ Own, was followed by A Stage Of grown steadily: more than two million cal. It wasn't until the late 1960's that Their Own (feminist playwrights of copies of novels, biographies, mem­ a newly-revived feminist movement the Suffrage Era); A History of Their oirs, diaries and letters by Woolf and discovered A Room of One's Own. Own (European history from a wom­ her circle of friends known as the While the feminists ofWoolf's genera­ an's perspective); A Heritage of Their group are in print from tion had focused their attention on Own (women in U.S. history); A her publisher, Brace public issues - women') right to a Mind of Her Own (a biography of Jovanovich. A highly praised film university education, to financial inde­ German psychoanalyst Karen adaptation of her Orlando was pendence, to enter the professions ­ Horney); and A League Of Their recently released, and. an opera based by the late 60's these battles had been Own, a movie about the women's on Mrs. Dalloway was introduced in largely won. The new generation of baseball league formed during World the fall of 1993 by the Lyric Opera of feminists turned their attention to the War II when the male athletes had Cleveland. Woolf has even entered arts, seeking to analyze the distinctive gone off to war. Last year, when a popular culture: in an ad for Barnes qualities of poems, plays and novels by women's bathroom was installed out­ and Noble bookstores, her portrait, in women - and asking why,.. through side the U. S. Senate chamber (the profile, faces that of a smiling Stephen the centuries, women had produced men's room had of course been there King. Devotees may purchase Virginia many fewer works of art than men. for years), head-

Bridgtwaur Rtvitw 27. lined the story, "A (Rest) Room of of introduction"), and he ultimately' , she would have been denied Their Own." The Boston Globe did co~es to represent all the ways in access to education, discouraged from even better: "Flush with Victory, which men have discouraged and crit­ writing, probably forced by her par­ Senate Women Win Another: A icized women who wanted to use their ents into marriage at an early age. Room ofTheir Own." minds. Woolf imagines Judith, driven by her What, fifty years after its origi­ Woolf's account of her two extraordinary gift for language and nal publication, continues to give this meals at "," luncheon at a love of the theater, running away to essay such widespread appeal? Woolf's men's college and dinner at a women's London. But she is unable to find thesis - "a woman must have money college, has the same surface casual­ work in the theater or any creative and a room of her own if she is to ness. Th~ men's college serves an ele­ outlet for her , and finally, faced write fiction" - is no longer contro­ gant meal, delectably described in with an unwanted pregnancy, she versial. Her tone is modest, even self­ mouth-watering detail: "soles, sunk in commits suicide. ReAecting on Judith effacing; she had some trouble with a deep dish, over which the college Shakespeare's tragic story, Woolf the topic, Woolf confesses at the cook had spread a counterpane of the develops a provocative theory about beginning of her essay, and is very whitest cream,". followed by partridges the fate ofcreative women: much afraid that she will disappoint . "with all their retinue of sauces and "When... one reads of a witch her readers. At first, A Room seems salads" accompanied by unlimited being dunked, of a woman possessed rambling, even aimless. Woolf sits on quantities of fine wine. Dinner at by devils, of a wise woman selling the bank of a river that Aows through Fernham, the women's college, is a herbs, or even of a very remarkable "Oxbridge" on a beautiful October man who had a mother, then I think day, she strolls through the university's we are on the track of a lost novelist, a courts and quadrangles, she has lunch. suppressed poet, of some mute and She recalls some fragments of inglorious , some Emily by Tennyson and , Bronte who dashed her brains out on sees a cat without a tail, walks to the moor ...Indeed, I would venture "Fernham," a women's college, meets a to guess that Anon, who wrote so friend for dinner. The following day, many poems without signing them, she goes to the British Museum to was often a woman." read what men have written about Women's silences, the novels women, then browses through the and plays and poems which, because shelves searching for books by women. of social and political constrictions, Yet the reader, accompanying women could not write, are as much a Woolf in her wanderings, begins to part of Woolf's analysis as the books sense that an argument is taking they did write. An essay which began shape. Strolling around Oxbridge, lost much sparser affair: plain gravy soup, as a modest and seem ingly casual in thought, Woolf inadvertently steps unadorned beef, prunes and custard. series of reAections on the subject of onto the grass: With the biscuits and cheese, water is women and fiction has emerged as an "Instantly a man's figure rose served. Why, Woolf wonders, did the intellectual journey whose power and to intercept me... His face expressed men drink wine and women water? daring would not be widely appreciat­ horror and indignation... he was a Why are men's colleges so wealthy and ed for another four decades. Beadle; I was a woman. This was the women's so poor? Woolf's argument Woolf would probably be as turf; there was the path. Only the gathers energy as she begins to under­ surprised as anyone at the success ofA Fellows and Scholars ar.e allowed here; stand why, for hundreds of years, men Room of One's Own. She saw it as a the gravel is the place for me." have gone to universities and women small and relatively insignificant part Being shooed off the grass have stayed at home. of her life's work (in her diary for appears to be a trivial event and the Thinking about the conditions October 1929, she referred to it as "a overreacting Beadle a figure of fun. of women's lives leads Woolf to the trifle"). Yet she was not displeased But this humorless enforcer of univer­ imagined biography of Judith with it. Looking back ten years later, sity rules returns in the guise of an Shakespeare, a character as powerful in 1938, she recorded in her diary that ironic "guardian angel" who refuses and memorable as many of those in "on rereading, fA Room] seems to me Woolf admittance to the library her novels. If a woman had been born a Iittle egotistic, flaunti ng, sketchy: ("ladies are only admitted to the with the genius of Shakespeare ­ but has its brilliance." library if accompanied by a fellow of what would her fate have been? the College or furnished with a letter Growing up in sixteenth century

28. BridgavattT Rtvitw