Virginia Woolf's "Cotton Wool of Daily Life" Author(s): Liesl M. Olson Source: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 26, No. 2, Virginia Woolf and Others (Winter, 2003), pp. 42-65 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831894 Accessed: 28-10-2019 13:29 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Modern Literature This content downloaded from 143.107.3.152 on Mon, 28 Oct 2019 13:29:46 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Virginia Woolf's ** "cotton wool of daily life Liesl M. Olson Columbia University [Poetry] has never been used for the common purpose of life. Prose has taken all the dirty work on to her own shoulders; has answered letters, paid bills, written articles, made speeches, served the needs of business- men, shopkeepers, lawyers, soldiers, peasants. ? Virginia Woolf, "The Narrow Bridge of Art"1 [T]he everyday is what we are first of all, and most often: at work, at lei? sure, awake, asleep, in the street, in private existence. The everyday, then, is ourselves, ordinarily.