Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  Mr Douglas Jerrold describes the treatment of politics in the Press. ‘In those few brief years [between 1928-33] truth had fled from Fleet Street. You could never tell all the truth all the time. You never will be able to do so. But you used at least to be able to tell the truth about other countries. By 1933, you did it at your peril. In 1928 there was no direct political pressure from advertisers. Today it is not only direct but effective.’

  Literary criticism would seem to be in much the same case and for the same reason: ‘There are no critics in whom the public have any more confidence. They trust, if at all, to the different Book Societies, and the selections of individual newspapers, and on the whole they are wise . . . The Book Society are frankly book sellers, and the great national newspapers cannot afford to puzzle their readers. They must all choose books which have, at the prevailing level of public taste, a potentially large sale.’ (Georgian Adventure, by Douglas Jerrold, p, 283, 298.)

  10. While it is obvious that under the conditions of journalism at present the criticism of literature must be unsatisfactory, it is also obvious that no change can be made, without changing the economic structure of society and the psychological structure of the artist. Economically, it is necessary that the reviewer should herald the publication of a new book with his town-crier’s shout ‘O yez, O yez, O yez, such and such a book has been published; its subject is this, that or the other.’ Psychologically, vanity and the desire for ‘recognition’ are still so strong among artists that to starve them of advertisement and to deny them frequent if contrasted shocks of praise and blame would be as rash as the introduction of rabbits into Australia: the balance of nature would be upset and the consequences might well be disastrous. The suggestion in the text is not to abolish public criticism; but to supplement it by a new service based on the example of the medical profession. A panel of critics recruited from reviewers (many of whom are potential critics of genuine taste and learning) would practise like doctors and in strictest privacy. Publicity removed, it follows that most of the distractions and corruptions which inevitably make contemporary criticism worthless to the writer would be abolished; all inducement to praise or blame for personal reasons would be destroyed; neither sales nor vanity would be affected; the author could attend to criticism without considering the effect upon public or friends; the critic could criticize without considering the editor’s blue pencil or the public taste. Since criticism is much desired by the living, as the constant demand for it proves, and since fresh books are as essential for the critic’s mind as fresh meat for his body, each would gain; literature even might benefit. The advantages of the present system of public criticism are mainly economic; the evil effects psychologically are shown by the two famous Quarterly reviews of Keats and Tennyson. Keats was deeply wounded; and ‘the effect . . . upon Tennyson himself was penetrating and prolonged. His first act was at once to withdraw from the press The Lover’s Tale . . . We find him thinking of leaving England altogether, of living abroad.’ (Tennyson, by Harold Nicolson, .) The effect of Mr Churton Collins upon Sir Edmund Gosse was much the same: ‘His self-confidence was undermined, his personality reduced . . . was not everyone watching his struggles regarding him as doomed? . . . His own account of his sensations was that he went about feeling that he had been flayed alive.’ (The Life and Letters of Sir Edmund Gosse, by Evan Charteris, .)

  11. ‘A-ring-the-bell-and-run-away-man.’ This word has been coined in order to define those who make use of words with the desire to hurt but at the same time to escape detection. In a transitional age when many qualities are changing their value, new words to express new values are much to be desired. Vanity, for example, which would seem to lead to severe complications of cruelty and tyranny, judging from evidence supplied abroad, is still masked by a name with trivial associations. A supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary is indicated.

  12. Memoir of Anne J. Clough, by B. A. Clough, p, 67.

  ‘The Sparrow’s Nest’, by William Wordsworth.

  13. In the nineteenth century much valuable work was done for the working class by educated men’s daughters in the only way that was then open to them. But now that some of them at least have received an expensive education, it is arguable that they can work much more effectively by remaining in their own class and using the methods of that class to improve a class which stands much in need of improvement. If on the other hand the educated (as so often happens) renounce the very qualities which education should have bought — reason, tolerance, knowledge — and play at belonging to the working class and adopting its cause, they merely expose that cause to the ridicule of the educated class, and do nothing to improve their own. But the number of books written by the educated about the working class would seem to show that the glamour of the working class and the emotional relief afforded by adopting its cause, are today as irresistible to the middle class as the glamour of the aristocracy was twenty years ago (see A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.) Meanwhile it would be interesting to know what the true-born working man or woman thinks of the playboys and playgirls of the educated class who adopt the working-class cause without sacrificing middle-class capital, or sharing working-class experience. ‘The average housewife’, according to Mrs Murphy, Home Service Director of the British Commercial Gas Association, ‘washed an acre of dirty dishes, a mile of glass and three miles of clothes and scrubbed five miles of floor yearly.’ (Daily Telegraph, 29 September 1937.) For a more detailed account of working-class life, see Life as We Have Known It, by Cooperative working women, edited by Margaret Llewelyn Davies. The Life of Joseph Wright also gives a remarkable account of working-class life at first hand and not through pro-proletarian spectacles.

  14. ‘It was stated yesterday at the War Office that the Army Council have no intention of opening recruiting for any women’s corps.’ (The Times, 22 October 1937.) This marks a prime distinction between the sexes. Pacifism is enforced upon women. Men are still allowed liberty of choice.

  15. The following quotation shows, however, that if sanctioned the fighting instinct easily develops. ‘The eyes deeply sunk into the sockets, the features acute, the amazon keeps herself very straight on the stirrups at the head of her squadron . . . Five English parlementaries look at this woman with the respectful and a bit restless admiration one feels for a “fauve” of an unknown species . . .

  — Come nearer Amalia — orders the commandant. She pushes her horse towards us and salutes her chief with the sword.

  — Sergeant Amalia Bonilla — continues the chief of the squadron — how old are you? — Thirty-six — Where were you born? — In Granada — Why have you joined the army? — My two daughters were militiawomen. The younger has been killed in the Alto de Leon. I thought I had to supersede her and avenge her. — And how many enemies have you killed to avenge her? — You know it, commandant, five. The sixth is not sure. — No, but you have taken his horse. The amazon Amalia rides in fact a magnificent dapple-grey horse, with glossy hair, which flatters like a parade horse . . . This woman who has killed five men — but who feels not sure about the sixth — was for the envoys of the House of Commons an excellent introducer to the Spanish war.’ (The Martyrdom of Madrid, Inedited Witnesses, by Louis Delaprée, p, 5, 6. Madrid, 1937.)

  16. By way of proof, an attempt may be made to elucidate the reasons given by various Cabinet Ministers in various Parliaments from about 1870 to 1918 for opposing the Suffrage Bill. An able effort has been made by Mrs Oliver Strachey (see chapter ‘The Deceitfulness of Polities’ in her The Cause).

  17. ‘We have had women’s civil and political status before the League only since 1935.’ From reports sent in as to the position of the woman as wife, mother and home maker, ‘the sorry fact was discovered that her economic position in many countries (including Great Britain) was unstable. She is entitled neither to salary nor wages and has definite duties to perform. In England, though she may have devoted her whole life to husband and children, her husband, no matter how wealthy, can leave her des
titute at his death and she has no legal redress. We must alter this — by legislation (Linda P. Littlejohn, reported in the Listener, 10 November 1937.)

  18. This particular definition of woman’s task comes not from an Italian but from a German source. There are so many versions and all are so much alike that it seems unnecessary to verify each separately. But it is curious to find how easy it is to cap them from English sources. Mr Gerhardi for example writes: ‘Never yet have I committed the error of looking on women writers as serious fellow artists. I enjoy them rather as spiritual helpers who, endowed with a sensitive capacity for appreciation, may help the few of us afflicted with genius to bear our cross with good grace. Their true role, therefore, is rather to hold out the sponge to us, cool our brow, while we bleed. If their sympathetic understanding may indeed be put to a more romantic use, how we cherish them for it!’ (Memoirs of a Polyglot, by William Gerhardi, p, 321.) This conception of woman’s role tallies almost exactly with that quoted above.

  19. To speak accurately, ‘a large silver plaque in the form of the Reich eagle . . . was created by President Hindenburg for scientists and other distinguished civilians . . . It may not be worn. It is usually placed on the writing-desk of the recipient.’ (Daily paper, 21 April 1936.)

  20. ‘It is a common thing to see the business girl contenting herself with a bun or a sandwich for her midday meal; and though there are theories that this is from choice . . . the truth is that they often cannot afford to eat properly.’ (Careers and Openings for Women, by Ray Strachey, .) Compare also Miss E. Turner: ‘. . . many offices had been wondering why they were unable to get through their work as smoothly as formerly. It had been found that junior typists were fagged out in the afternoons because they could afford only an apple and a sandwich for lunch. Employers should meet the increased cost of living by increased salaries.’ (The Times, 28 March 1938.)

  21. The Mayoress of Woolwich (Mrs Kathleen Rance) speaking at a bazaar, reported in Evening Standard, 20 December 1937.

  22. Miss E. R. Clarke, reported in The Times, 24 September 1937.

  23. Reported in Daily Herald, 15 August 1936.

  24. Canon F. R. Barry, speaking at conference arranged by Anglican Group at Oxford, reported in The Times, 10 January 1933.

  25. The Ministry of Women, Report of the Archbishops’ Commission. VII. Secondary Schools and Universities, .

  26. ‘Miss D. Carruthers, Head Mistress of the Green School, Isleworth, said there was a “very grave dissatisfaction” among older schoolgirls at the way in which organized religion was carried on. “The Churches seem somehow to be failing to supply the spiritual needs of young people,” she said. “It is a fault that seems common to all churches.”’ (Sunday Times, 21 November 1937.)

  27. Life of Charles Gore, by G. L. Prestige, D.D., .

  28. The Ministry of Women. Report of the Archbishops’ Commission, passim.

  29. Whether or not the gift of prophecy and the gift of poetry were originally the same, a distinction has been made between those gifts and professions for many centuries. But the fact that the Song of Songs, the work of a poet, is included among the sacred books, and that propagandist poems and novels, the works of prophets, are included among the secular, points to some confusion. Lovers of English literature can scarcely be too thankful that Shakespeare lived too late to be canonized by the Church. Had the plays been ranked among the sacred books they must have received the same treatment as the Old and New Testaments; we should have had them doled out on Sundays from the mouths of priests in snatches; now a soliloquy from Hamlet; now a corrupt passage from the pen of some drowsy reporter; now a bawdy song; now half a page from Antony and Cleopatra, as the Old and New Testaments have been sliced up and interspersed with hymns in the Church of England service; and Shakespeare would have been as unreadable as the Bible. Yet those who have not been forced from childhood to hear it thus dismembered weekly assert that the Bible is a work of the greatest interest, much beauty, and deep meaning.

  30. The Ministry of Women, Appendix I. ‘Certain Psychological and Physiological Considerations’, by Professor Grensted, D.D., p-87.

  31. ‘At present a married priest is able to fulfil the requirements of the ordination service, “to forsake and set aside all worldly cares and studies”, largely because his wife can undertake the care of the household and the family . . .’ (The Ministry of Women, .)

  The Commissioners are here stating and approving a principle which is frequently stated and approved by the dictators. Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini have both often in very similar words expressed the opinion that ‘There are two worlds in the life of the nation, the world of men and the world of women’; and proceeded to much the same definition of the duties. The effect which this division has had upon the woman; the petty and personal nature of her interests; her absorption in the practical; her apparent incapacity for the poetical and adventurous — all this has been made the staple of so many novels, the target for so much satire, has confirmed so many theorists in the theory that by the law of nature the woman is less spiritual than the man, that nothing more need be said to prove that she has carried out, willingly or unwillingly, her share of the contract. But very little attention has yet been paid to the intellectual and spiritual effect of this division of duties upon those who are enabled by it ‘to forsake all worldly cares and studies’. Yet there can be no doubt that we owe to this segregation the immense elaboration of modern instruments and methods of war; the astonishing complexities of theology; the vast deposit of notes at the bottom of Greek, Latin and even English texts; the innumerable carvings, chasings and unnecessary ornamentations of our common furniture and crockery; the myriad distinctions of Debrett and Burke; and all those meaningless but highly ingenious turnings and twistings into which the intellect ties itself when rid of ‘the cares of the household and the family’. The emphasis which both priests and dictators place upon the necessity for two worlds is enough to prove that it is essential to the domination.

  32. Evidence of the complex nature of satisfaction of dominance is provided by the following quotation: ‘My husband insists that I call him “Sir”,’ said a woman at the Bristol Police Court yesterday, when she applied for a maintenance order. ‘To keep the peace I have complied with his request,’ she added. ‘I also have to clean his boots, fetch his razor when he shaves, and speak up promptly when he asks me questions.’ In the same issue of the same paper Sir E. F. Fletcher is reported to have ‘urged the House of Commons to stand up to dictators.’ (Daily Herald, 1 August 1926.) This would seem to show that the common consciousness which includes husband, wife and House of Commons is feeling at one and the same moment the desire to dominate, the need to comply in order to keep the peace, and the necessity of dominating the desire for dominance — a psychological conflict which serves to explain much that appears inconsistent and turbulent in contemporary opinion. The pleasure of dominance is of course further complicated by the fact that it is still, in the educated class, closely allied with the pleasures of wealth, social and professional prestige. Its distinction from the comparatively simple pleasures — e.g. the pleasure of a country walk — is proved by the fear of ridicule which great psychologists, like Sophocles, detect in the dominator; who is also peculiarly susceptible according to the same authority either to ridicule or defiance on the part of the female sex. An essential element in this pleasure therefore would seem to be derived not from the feeling itself but from the reflection of other people’s feelings, and it would follow that it can be influenced by a change in those feelings. Laughter as an antidote to dominance is perhaps indicated.

  33. The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Mrs Gaskell.

  34. The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake, by Margaret Todd, p-9, 70-71, 72.

  35. External observation would suggest that a man still feels it a peculiar insult to be taunted with cowardice by a woman in much the same way that a woman feels it a peculiar insult to be taunted with unchastity by a man. The following quotation supports
this view. Mr Bernard Shaw writes: ‘I am not forgetting the gratification that war gives to the instinct of pugnacity and admiration of courage that are so strong in women . . . In England on the outbreak of war civilized young women rush about handing white feathers to all young men who are not in uniform. This,’ he continues, ‘like other survivals from savagery is quite natural,’ and he points out that ‘in old days a woman’s life and that of her children depended on the courage and killing capacity of her mate.’ Since vast numbers of young men did their work all through the war in offices without any such adornment, and the number of ‘civilized young women’ who stuck feathers in coats must have been infinitesimal compared with those who did nothing of the kind, Mr Shaw’s exaggeration is sufficient proof of the immense psychological impression that fifty or sixty feathers (no actual statistics are available) can still make. This would seem to show that the male still preserves an abnormal susceptibility to such taunts; therefore that courage and pugnacity are still among the prime attributes of manliness; therefore that he still wishes to be admired for possessing them; therefore that any derision of such qualities would have a proportionate effect. That ‘the manhood emotion’ is also connected with economic independence seems probable. ‘We have never known a man who was not, openly or secretly, proud of being able to support women; whether they were his sisters or his mistresses. We have never known a woman who did not regard the change from economic independence on an employer to economic dependence on a man, as an honourable promotion. What is the good of men and women lying to each other about these things? It is not we that have made them’ — (A. H. Orage, by Philip Mairet, vii) — an interesting statement, attributed by G. K. Chesterton to A. H. Orage.