Woolf in the Real World Selected Papers from the Thirteenth International Conference on Virginia Woolf Woolf in the Real World Selected Papers from the Thirteenth International Conference on Virginia Woolf Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts 5–8 June 2003 Edited by Karen V. Kukil A full-text digital version of this book is available on the Internet, at the Center for Vir- ginia Woolf Studies, California State University, Bakersfield. Go to http://www.csub.edu/ woolf_center and click the Publications link. Works produced at Clemson University by the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, including The South Carolina Review and its themed series “Virginia Woolf International,” may be found at our Web site: http://www. clemson.edu/caah/cedp. Contact the director at 864-656-5399 for information. Copyright 2005 by Clemson University ISBN 0-9771263-2-3 Published by Clemson University Digital Press at the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. Produced at CEDP using Adobe Photoshop Elements CS, Adobe InDesign CS, and Micro- soft Word 2000. This book is set in Adobe Garamond Pro and was printed by University Printing Services, Office of Publications and Promotional Services, Clemson University. Copy editing and layout at the press by Christi Conti, assisted by Charis Chapman and Wayne Chapman (Executive Editor). To order copies, contact the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Strode Tower, Box 340522, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634-0522. An order form is available at the digital press Web site (see above) under “SCROLL” and linked to the themed issue page entitled “Virginia Woolf International.” Front cover illustration: Vanessa Bell (British 1879-1961) Virginia Woolf, ca. 1912 Oil on paperboard, 14½ x 12 inches Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts Gift of Ann Safford Mandel Frontispiece: Virginia Woolf at Garsington, 1923 Original photograph, 3 x 5 inches Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts iv Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Karen V. Kukil ............................................................................................................vii 2 THE LIFE OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Carol T. Christ • Woolf and Education ........................................................................... 2 Lyndall Gordon • “This Loose, Drifting Material of Life”: Virginia Woolf and Biography .............................................................................................................. 11 Catherine W. Hollis • Virginia Woolf’s Double Signature .............................................. 19 Maggie Humm • Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell as Photographers: “The Same Pair of Eyes, Only Different Spectacles” ................................................................... 24 Julia Briggs • “Printing Hope”: Virginia Woolf, Hope Mirrlees, and the Iconic Imagery of Paris .................................................................................................... 31 Michèle Barrett • Virginia Woolf and Pacifism .............................................................. 37 Cheryl Mares • Woolf and the American Imaginary ....................................................... 42 2 THE WRITINGS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Susan Rubinow Gorsky • The Mask/Masque of Food: Illness and Art ............................. 50 Mary C. Madden • Woolf’s Interrogation of Class in Night and Day ............................. 56 Joseph Kreutziger • Darwin’s Temporal Aesthetics: A Brief Stretch in Time from Pater to Woolf ........................................................................................................ 64 Cornelia Burian • Modernity’s Shock and Beauty: Trauma and the Vulnerable Body in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway ............................................................... 70 Elizabeth Hirsh • Mrs. Dalloway’s Menopause: Encrypting the Female Life Course .......... 76 Kathryn Simpson • The Paradox of the Gift: Gift Giving as a Disruptive Force in Woolf’s Writing ..................................................................................................... 82 Lorraine Sim • Ailing Dualisms: Woolf’s Revolt against Rationalism in the “Real World” of Influenza ............................................................................................... 88 Dianne Hunter • Objects Dissolving in Time ................................................................. 94 McKenzie L. Zeiss • The Political Legacy of the Garden: (Anti)Pastoral Images and National Identity in Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West ................................. 100 Erica L. Johnson • Writing the Land: The Geography of National Identity in Orlando ............................................................................................................. 105 Eleanor McNees • The Guidebook and the Dog: Virginia Woolf and Italy ..................... 110 Jennifer-Ann DiGregorio Kightlinger • Sex Costumes: Signifying Sex and Gender in Woolf’s “The Introduction” andThe Years ............................................. 117 Elizabeth Gallaher von Klemperer • “The Works of Women Are Symbolical” ................. 123 v 2 THE AFTERLIFE OF VIRGINIA WOOLF Frances Spalding • Vanessa Bell’s Portrait of Virginia Woolf at Smith College ................. 130 Elizabeth A. Shih and Susan M. Kenney • Editing the Palimpsestic Text: The Case of Virginia Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past” ....................................................... 132 Jan Freeman • The Paris Press Publication of On Being Ill .......................................... 141 William Pryor • The Living Memes and Jeans of Bloomsbury and Neo-Paganism ........... 147 Drew Patrick Shannon • The Lightly Attached Web: The Fictional Virginia Woolf ......... 153 Laura Francesca Aimone • In the Footsteps of Virginia Woolf: The Hours by Michael Cunningham .......................................................................................... 159 Doryjane Birrer • “What Are Novelists For?”: Writing and Rewriting Reality from Woolf to McEwan ................................................................................................ 165 Pamela St. Clair • In Search of the Self: Virginia Woolf’s Shadow across Sylvia Plath’s Page ......................................................................................................... 171 Kristin Kommers Czarnecki • Filming Feminism: A Room of One’s Own on Masterpiece Theater ........................................................................................... 177 Joyce Avrech Berkman • Doing the Splits: Outsider/Insider as Women’s Historian and Feminist Activist .......................................................................................... 183 Susan C. Bourque • Carolyn Heilbrun: The Last Interview .......................................... 187 2 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ................................................................................ 193 CONFERENCE PROGRAM ...................................................................................... 198 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................... 219 vi Introduction by Karen V. Kukil he Smith College community was honored to host the thirteenth international conference on Virginia Woolf in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 5–8 June 2003. Generous support for the conference was received from every corner of the campus, Tas well as from the five-college consortium and from local collectors and museums. As the organizers of the conference discovered, Virginia Woolf is revered in western Massachusetts, a place she never visited but learned about from her British contemporaries. In the 1930s both Vita Sackville-West and Hugh Walpole lectured in Northampton, Massachusetts, for the Hampshire Bookshop. Smith College is an appropriate place to host a conference on Virginia Woolf. Her work has been an integral part of the curriculum since the early1920s, when authors Mary Ellen Chase and Mina Kirstein Curtiss joined the English faculty. A Room of One’s Own and other essays by Virginia Woolf have inspired many graduates of the college, from author and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh to feminist activist Gloria Steinem, as well as every president of Smith from Jill Ker Conway, the first woman to hold the position, to current president and Victorianist scholar Carol T. Christ. The poetry of Woolf’s prose has also influenced aspiring writers, including Smith’s most famous poet, Sylvia Plath. After graduating from Smith, a number of alumnae assembled important collections related to Virginia Woolf and her circle of friends: Frances Hooper purchased Woolf’s manuscripts, letters, and first editions of her work directly from Leonard Woolf; Elizabeth Power Richardson purchased and indexed her Bloomsbury iconography collection, including Leslie Stephen’s photograph album; and Ann Safford Mandel collected paintings and book-cover designs by Vanessa Bell, in addition to first editions of the Hogarth Press. All of these collections were on display during the conference to the delight of the more than 350 delegates, from eight countries. Most of the exhibitions are now available on the Smith College website (www.smith.edu), fulfilling one of the main goals of the conference: to showcase and share the riches of Smith’s special collections with the scholarly community. An active program committee planned the panels at which nearly 200 papers were presented on the theme of “Woolf in the Real World,” a title adapted