Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Barbara Apstein Bridgewater State College
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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, Edward Albee 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 novels 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, James Joyce 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 Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. 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 To the Lighthouse 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. Eileen Atkins playing Woolf, had a of her work flourish in academic jour During the decades that fol successful run in London, New York nals. But a lively interest in Woolf also lowed, Woolf's reputation as a novelist 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 essay: 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 Bloomsbury group are in print from tion had focused their attention on Own (women in U.S. history); A her publisher, Harcourt 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 novel 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), the New York Times head- Bridgtwaur Rtvitw 27. lined the story, "A (Rest) Room of of introduction"), and he ultimately' England, 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 "Oxbridge," 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 genius, 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 poetry inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily by Tennyson and Christina Rossetti, 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..