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CLASSICAL MEMORIES/MODERN IDENTITIES Paul Allen Miller and Richard H. Armstrong, Series Editors Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison, AND THE Spirit of Modernist Classicism R Jean Mills THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2014 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Control Number 2014931257 Cover design by Mary Ann Smith Type set in Adobe Sabon Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Martha Lou Haag, Potnia Theron and Tenth Muse CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix Key to Titles x Acknowledgments xii INTRODUCTION Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison, and the Spirit of Modernist Classicism: A Transpersonal Modernism 1 CHAPTER 1 Of the Nymph and the Noun: Jane Harrison, Janet Case, and Virginia Woolf’s Greek Education—From Mentorship to Transpersonal Desire 38 CHAPTER 2 The Making and Re-Making of a God(dess): Re-writing Modernism’s War Story—Feminist Ritual Structures as Transpersonal Plots 62 CHAPTER 3 Reading Transpersonally I—“Next Comes the Wife’s Room . ”: A Room of One’s Own and “Scientiae Sacra Fames” 115 CHAPTER 4 Reading Transpersonally II—Women Building Peace: Three Guineas and “Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism” 134 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER 5 To Russia with Love: Literature, Language, and a Shared Ideology of the Political Left 153 AFTERWORD Modernism’s Transpersonal and: Re-connecting Women’s Lives/Women’s Work and the Politics of Recovering a Reputation 168 Bibliography 177 Index 186 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1 Jane Harrison as a young Classics student, ca. 1880. 13 FIGURE 2 Virginia Stephen and her nephew Julian Bell, ca. 1910. 41 FIGURE 3 Janet Case as Athena, ca. 1881–1883. 48 FIGURE 4 Jane Harrison as Alcestis, Oxford 1887. 52 FIGURE 5 A drinking bowl featuring Dionysus and his Thiasos. 66 FIGURE 6 A kylix featuring Themis. 76 FIGURE 7 Jane Harrison with members of her Cambridge Ritualist circle, H. F. Stewart, Gilbert Murray, and Francis Cornford, ca. 1904. 123 FIGURE 8 Virginia Woolf with Lytton Strachey and Goldsworthy Lowes “Goldie” Dickinson, ca. 1923. 145 ix KEY TO TITLES Virginia Woolf AROO A Room of One’s Own D The Diaries of Virginia Woolf JR Jacob’s Room L The Letters of Virginia Woolf LBN Libation Bearers Notebook MB Moments of Being MBMB “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” MD Mrs. Dalloway MF “Modern Fiction” ND Night and Day ONKG “On Not Knowing Greek” PA A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897–1909 TG Three Guineas TOP “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid W The Waves x KEY TO TITLES xi Jane Ellen Harrison AAR Ancient Art and Ritual A&O Alpha and Omega E Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion EOW “Epilogue on the War: Peace with Patriotism” P Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion R Reminiscences of a Student’s Life SSF “Scientiae Sacra Fames” T Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion Archives AR Papers Alexei Remizov, Papers. Amherst Center for Russian Culture. Amherst College HMH Hope Mirrlees, Papers. Hornbake Library, University of Maryland HMN Hope Mirrlees, Papers. Newnham College Archives, Newnham Col- lege, Cambridge JC Papers Janet Case, Papers. Girton College Archives, Girton College, Cambridge JH Papers Jane Ellen Harrison, Papers. Newnham College Archives, Newnham College, Cambridge MH Papers Monks House Papers. Manuscript Collections. University of Sussex Library VWBerg Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf, Papers. Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection. New York Public Library AckNOWLEDGMENTS I W I SH TO THANK my own intellectual mothers, mentors, and friends, especially Jane Marcus, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Clare Coss, and Alison Bernstein. In many ways, this book is not only inspired by them, but is about them. Their impatience with injustice in all its guises and their enduring contributions in mentoring and empowering women are extensions of the conversation continued here. I am particularly grateful for the archival support and expertise of Anne Thomson and Pat Acker- man, at The Jane Ellen Harrison Papers (and more recently, The Hope Mirrlees Papers), Newnham College, Cambridge University; Robert Ack- erman, Clare College, Cambridge; Jay Barksdale of the Wertheim Room in the Research Division of The New York Public Library; Isaac Gerwitz, of The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of The New York Pub- lic Library; Stanley Rabinowitz and Isabel Duarte-Gray at The Amherst Center for Russian Culture; Kate Perry of The Janet Case Papers, Girton College, Cambridge; Karen Watson of Monks House Papers, Sussex Uni- versity; Trevor Bond, Special Collections, Holland Library, Washing- ton State University; Karen Kukil of Rare Book Room, William Allen Nielsen Library, Smith College; Kings College Archives, Kings College, xii AckNOWLEDGMENTS xiii Cambridge; The Hornbake Library, University of Maryland; and the curators of Antikensammlung at the Altes Museum and Pergamon Museum in Berlin. I wish to thank the International Virginia Woolf Society and the Vir- ginia Woolf Society of Great Britain for providing such intellectually vibrant forums for presenting and testing my ideas and essays over the course of writing this book. In particular, I’d like to thank Leslie Han- kins, Suzanne Bellamy, Judith Allen, Georgia Johnston, Bonnie Kime Scott, Helen Southworth, Vara Neverow, Merry Pawlowski, Suzette Henke, Anne Fernald, Mark Hussey, Helen Wussow, Gillian Beer, Fran- ces Spaulding, and Christine Froula for their own work in Woolf Studies, and for their intellectual insight and generosity. I wish to acknowledge the memory and important work of scholars, Julia Briggs and Eve Sedg- wick, each of whom were early backers of my work on Woolf and Har- rison. Thanks to friends and scholars Sandi E. Cooper; the indomitable Ruth Gruber; Deborah Lutz; Rebecca Wisor; Ashley Foster; Deryn Rees- Jones; June Dunn; Linda Camarasano; Elias Theodorakopoulos; Cori Gabbard; Claire Buck; Michael Marcus; Christopher Stray; and Dr. Sarah Sheftel. At Sissinghurst, I’d like to thank Frances Brooks and Cathy Hickey for the return ride home. For their generous support of my research, I wish to thank John Jay College’s Office for Sponsored Programs; the Professional Staff Congress; The Office for the Advancement of Research; and my incredible col- leagues in the John Jay College English Department. I wish to acknowl- edge early support from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York; the Mario Cappeloni Fellowship; Nina Fortin Memorial Award; Florence Howe Award; and Robert Adams Day Prize award committees. At The Ohio State University Press, I am indebted to my readers Rich- ard H. Armstrong and Paul Allen Miller; to the expertise and profession- alism of my editor, Eugene O’Connor; and to members of the production and marketing staff, whose efforts kept the book on track and on point, from farm to table, as we like to say Upstate. Thanks to Spirit Wilson, Jr. for the Index and to my brother, Scott Mills, for his help in securing the photographs. I wish also to thank my family and my ‘found families’ of friends for their support during the years spent writing this book: my wife, Martha, my daughter, Abby, my stepsons, Max, Peter, and Harrison Basch, my mother, Alice Jean Mills; my brothers, Robert, Scott, and Todd; friends Rachel Hyman, Richard David, Sharon Klein, Harriet Lyons, Karen xiv AckNOWLEDGMENTS Katz, Gary Richards, Ivy and Lance Lappin; my tennis family, especially Chris, Linda, Sandi, and Lorna; and the baby group, Debi Wierum, Shari Werner, and Helen Lorell. Thanks for listening and reading, and also for feeding me and often giving me a place to sleep while I took this trip. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge the memory of the following people who I’d like to think would have enjoyed reading this: my father, Stanley Rob- ert Mills; my mother-in-law, Audrey L. Haag; and my sister-in-law, Kath- ryn Haag Clauss. Nox est perpetua una dormienda. INTRODUCTION Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison, and the Spirit of Modernist Classicism A Transpersonal Modernism R T H I S I NTERD I SC I PL I NARY study re-examines the origins and sources of Virginia Woolf’s intellectual, literary, and political views by decisively positioning her work in dialogue with the theories and practices of Cam- bridge classicist, Jane Ellen Harrison. Drawing on the discourses of femi- nist historicism, feminist theory, cultural studies, and literary analysis, I argue that a distinctive model of relations between women intellectuals emerges by cross-reading Jane Harrison and Virginia Woolf that does not rehearse the linearity of influence, but outlines an intertextuality, an active and transformative use of one body of writing by another writer that makes of Virginia Woolf’s modernism a specifically feminist amplification. This cross-reading reveals a dimension of modernism that has been over- looked or minimized, but which has far-reaching significance in its total- ity across the writing lives and professional careers of both women, as I argue that the questions preoccupying Harrison resonated with Woolf as she adapted these ideas to her own intellectual, political, and literary pur- suits. What is the relationship of the family and women to the state? What are the sources of violence and war? What role can gender play in effect- ing social change? What are the roots of patriarchy and the possibilities of 1 2 INTRODUCTION alternative social systems? How do universal structures, like language and time, function and govern culture? And what role can art play in changing our lives? To an extent, this study participates in an act of recovery, and is an effort to revive and reclaim Harrison’s work, and to point to the degree to which her cultural, political, and scholastic example informed one of the major modernist voices of the twentieth century.

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