"Was It That You Were Suppressed When You Were Young?"
The Role of Women in Virginia Woolf's Later Fiction

Addison Godel
Virginia Woolf And The Fabric of Things
Instructor: Dr. David Bradshaw
Worcester College, Oxford

(Pages from The Years are marked Y###; pages from Between the Acts are marked B###.  For both, refer to the Oxford World Classics paperback edition.)

From the first appearance of Rachel Vinrace in The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf made the status of women in her time a pressing issue in her writing.  It is rumoured that Orlando explores this topic further, but it was not until the 1930s that Woolf’s fictional work acquired overt feminist tones.  And while A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas are well-acknowledged as classic feminist works; less recognized is the commentary on the female condition in the novels The Years and Between The Acts.  Among these two books’ many other themes is woven a tapestry of women’s lives: we see the methods and consequences of female subjugation, as well as the variety of new female roles emerging at the time of the novels’ writing.

Woolf shrewdly (and characteristically) avoids making too many explicit references to the inequality between men and women; there is the presence in The Years of the suffragette Rose, of course, along with a viciously direct reference to the inhuman treatment of hunger-striking imprisoned suffragettes, Y220.  And the plight of Vita Sackville-West appears for a moment in Kitty, who notes of her estate that “Nothing of this belonged to her; her son would inherit; his wife would walk here after her.” (Y265)  In Between The Acts, an exasperated Isa notes her husband's double standard, his “usual explanation.  It made no difference; his infidelity – but hers did.” (B100)  But these moments are the exception, and serve mainly to remind us that Woolf was definitely thinking about the “woman question”; knowing this, it is by no means a stretch to pull feminist messages from other, more subtle details in the books.

One of the most striking things about The Years is the undeveloped condition of its women; over and over we are shown female characters ignorant of the “male” world of education and worldliness, reluctant to express themselves and trapped by their own future labels.  Of course, other characters also project a sense of “undeveloped-ness” – Edward, for example, seems to regard his life with regret, and the inability of people to escape their past and expectations is clearly a theme of the novel independent of sex – however, it is women that receive the most poignant treatment, in several ways.

First, women are repeatedly depicted as ignorant of male affairs and unable to follow male conversation.  In 1909, Eleanor thinks of Martin that “He met all sorts of people she did not know … and he did not want to talk about them.” (Y152)  Eight years later, Eleanor is unable to follow the (hollow) discussion of “the psychology of great men”: “But she had no notion of what he was saying.  They were in the middle of an argument … but it came to an end without her understanding a word of it, except that it had to do with Napoleon.”  (Y267) Women in The Years seem to internalise responsibility for their ignorance, treating it as if it was a fault of their own.  When Eleanor attempts to find out more about the Napoleon conversation, she thinks “I’ve interrupted them … and I’ve nothing whatever to say.”  (Y267)  Similarly, Kitty in 1914, feels “foolish” when she learns belatedly that a remark of Edward’s is a quotation: “Oxford always made her feel foolish.” (Y248-9)  As far as Oxford-style learning is concerned, Eleanor does consider familiarizing herself with the classics, but postpones it until after externally imposed family duties are addressed (Y203).  Note that for a male character, North, “brushing up” on the classics is one of many possible pursuits for a holiday (Y388).  In a moment especially reminiscent of Rachel Vinrace, Kitty asks an incidental character named Ann Hillier about her educational prospects: “She’s taking you on?”  Kitty then wonders to herself “Why? … looking at the lovely face, empty of meaning, or character, like a page on which nothing has been written but youth.” (Y252)

It is, after all, important to know what’s going on in the world; to be unaware of one’s own world is to become infantile, or senile.  Kitty on a train, trying to sleep, is seemingly overwhelmed by the need to know more about her situation: “How could she sleep?  How could she prevent herself from thinking?  … Now where are we?  … Where is the train at this moment?” (Y259)  The same scene is created with Eleanor on another train: “She felt as if things were moving past her … but it’s not the landscape any longer, it’s people’s lives, their changing lives.” (Y201)

Second, women are portrayed as being somehow unfinished or undeveloped; like Rachel Vinrace in The Voyage Out, they don’t seem to have gotten out much, or to have found a sense of themselves beyond that which has been imposed on them by their upbringing.  Rose, in 1910, is made to feel by family catching-up that she is both “here in this room now” and “a little girl wearing a pink frock” at the same moment (Y159).  Asked to “Say whatever you like … say something very profound,” Sara is completely silent (Y224-5).  In general Sara seems frankly dysfunctional, speaking in riddles and unknowingly awkward in social situations.  We see traces of this awkwardness in other characters: Kitty, idly complimented by her lady guests, “did not like being alone with women after dinner; it made her shy.” (Y244)  Later, Kitty seems unable to separate herself from her domestic possessions – when Martin looks around at her decoration, she feels “that he [is] criticizing the room and herself too.”  (Y250)  Eleanor stops and starts through an attempt to comment on the state of the world, and “She dropped her voice as if she were afraid of waking sleepers”; she then proceeds to automatically agree with Renny’s own vague comments “as if to assure him that his words were right.” (Y281-2)  Talking to Edward about the Antigone, Eleanor “broke off, as if afraid to continue.” (Y393)

In the present day, decision-making and responsibility is almost unconsciously passed from women to men; Sara lets North make the decision on whether or not they will eat the gross meat (Y302), and Eleanor recalls that Nicholas “wouldn’t let me pay for the wine … though it was I who ordered it.” (Y349)  Eleanor sometimes wishes to escape thought entirely: “But why do I notice everything? … Why must I think?  She did not want to think.  … Thinking was torment; why not give up thinking, and drift and dream?” (Y369)  In her defence, Eleanor resents being trapped by expectations placed on aging women: “But then she thought, I should turn into a grey-haired lady cutting flowers with a pair of scissors and tapping at cottage doors.  She did not want to tap at cottage doors.  And the clergyman … would come to tea with her.  But she did not want the clergyman to come to tea with her.”  (Y186)  Not long after, she thinks “But now I’m labelled, she thought – an old maid who washes and watches birds.  That’s what they think I am.  But I’m not – I’m not in the least like that…”  (Y193)

To other characters, the undeveloped condition of these women is a matter for trivial speculation.  In Between The Acts, Bart reflects on his sister that “She would have been, he thought, a very clever woman, had she fixed her gaze.  But this led to that; that to the other.”  (B22)  In The Years, North, wondering why Eleanor has never married, thinks “Sacrificed to the family, he supposed – old Grandpa without any fingers.” (Y354) This glib observation from outside is mirrored painfully by Eleanor’s own thoughts: “But no, she thought, I can’t find words; I can’t tell anybody. … My life’s been other people’s lives… my father’s; Morris’s; my friends’ lives; Nicholas’s…” (Y349)

Woolf seems to agree with Eleanor that having one’s life be “other people’s lives” is a terrible shame.  But she gives us more to the story, a mechanism by which this comes to be.  Women in  The Years are constantly ignored and interrupted throughout their lives; scarce wonder that they have no confidence in themselves.  That women are ignored when they speak is made quite plainl; in conversations between men and women, the questions of women are ignored, “not attended” (Y353), or gotten around to later, as when Maggie asks Martin what he discussed with Sara.  He spends a paragraph commenting on Sara’s tipsiness, then answers the question.  (Y232)  Note that in doing so, Martin unconsciously belittles both Maggie’s question and the quality of his earlier discourse with Sara; both are beneath his attention when compared to his own observations about Sara’s condition.

The actual conversation between Sara and Martin itself touches on these issues.  Among other things, they talked about the three exhorters they passed in Hyde Park; two male and one female.  The two men seem to be attended by “crowds,” while the woman’s audience “was extremely small.  Her voice was hardly audible.  She held a little book in her hand and she was saying something about sparrows.  But her voice trailed off into a thin frail pipe.  A chorus of little boys imitated her.”  Martin refers to her as “The poor old lady whom nobody listened to … talking about the sparrows.”  (Y228-9)  The sophistication of Woolf’s technique is worth noting here – an old lady talking about birds is precisely what Eleanor, a few years earlier, was trying to resist being labelled as.  By dismissing this drowned-out, inaudible woman in the park, Martin is also implicitly dismissing his sister and by extension women in general.

It is interruption, however, that most definitively characterizes the treatment of women in The Years.  Women are interrupted often by incidental events: Crosby opening the door on page 145; a bell ringing on page 147; the arrival of a maid on page 197.  But they are more often interrupted by men: the “gentlemen” on page 197; a Mr. Pickford on page 170; Renny on page 269; North starting his car on page 291; Renny again on page 331.  These are not always trivial interruptions – repeatedly, women are cut off just as they were about to get at something important to them.  Eleanor in 1910 is trying to get to “something deeper … the only point that was of any importance” when Mr. Pickford cuts her off by getting up to leave.  Maggie is on the verge of “summing up into one whole … completing the pattern” (Y331)  And, in contrast to the way Nicholas is hounded by other characters to complete his trivial observations when he is interrupted at the party, we almost never find out what it is that women are about to say when they are interrupted.  The thoughts are stillborn.  Talking to Peggy in the present day, Eleanor repeatedly interrupts herself with unrelated stray thoughts; Peggy offers a simplistic explanation: “Was it that you were suppressed when you were young?” (Y317)  Having come of age in an era of women’s suffrage (but continuing, subtle oppression), Peggy is unable to see that Eleanor’s whole life has been defined by suppression.  A few pages earlier, a remark by Eleanor makes absolutely explicit the long-term psychological consequences of being interrupted over and over:  ”’D’you know the feeling when one’s been on the point of saying something, and been interrupted; how it seems to stick here’, she tapped her forehead, ‘so that it stops everything else?’” (Y309)

Where The Years provides a series of longitudinal case studies, Between The Acts takes place on a single day and offers glimpses at the lives of several different women in 1939.  Woolf paints a mixed picture of women at the time of her writing; they definitely have reaped the benefits of the reforms fought for by women like Rose.  But they are still not entirely liberated.  Perhaps the clearest example is Isa, who enjoys reading and learning and seems to consider herself liberated.  On the day of the pageant, she is working her way through a book on the history of the world, losing herself happily in the world of dinosaurs and mammoths.  Looking at Mrs. Swithin (a woman of roughly Eleanor’s generation), she sees her “… as if she had been a dinosaur, or a very diminutive mammoth.  Extinct she must be, since she had lived in the reign of Queen Victoria.”  (B156).  Isa’s self-education is linked to her distance from ye olden days of a few decades earlier.  However, Isa is by no means free to express herself or her education as she pleases: she writes poetry, but in secret, “in a book bound like an account book lest Giles [her husband] might suspect.”  (B46)

Then there is Miss La Trobe, who, while she may lament “O, the torture of these interruptions!” (B73) by no means suffers from an interrupted life the way Eleanor does.  La Trobe is certainly one of the most eccentric and independent women in Woolf’s entire body of fiction (for this is and other reasons, she is widely read as a lesbian figure).  She has a background of conducting her own adventures – keeping a tea shop, being an actress, and managing the pageants for seven years.   Physically, “she was swarthy, sturdy and thick set; strode about the fields in a smock frock; sometimes with a cigarette in her mouth; often with a whip in her hand; and used rather strong language – perhaps, then, she wasn’t altogether a lady?” (B53)  This masculinized woman may be known as “Bossy” to her underlings (B58, elsewhere), but she has underlings, and they do her bidding.  La Trobe is able to realize her vision in the pageant, even if the means available to her are not quite sufficient and her audience does not quite see her point.  Try to picture any of the Victorian-era women from The Years – Kitty, Eleanor, even Rose – occupying this role and it's clear how much times have changed in Woolf’s eyes.  La Trobe is even shown as offering a vision of a different life to the Victorian holdovers around her: Mrs. Swithin exclaims about her life, “What a small part I’ve had to play!  But you’ve made me feel I could have played…Cleopatra!” (B137)

We might also look at Mrs. Manresa, who actively cultivates a “wild child” image but is also defined by vanity.  Her makeup is, we are reminded, only skin-deep, and while she confidently faces down the mirrors, she does so while engaged in powdering her nose and straightening her hair (B167).  And there is sadly not space to delve into the complex character of Rose Pargiter in The Years – a suffragette but still trapped by her family, constantly mocked by her brother Martin.  It may be best to close with a look at Peggy, a “modern woman” employed as a doctor in the 1930s.  She feels no need to put up with self-important men, such as the poet on pages 342-3: “Let me shake him off, then.”  She declares “I’m a doctor,” and “the fire [goes] out of his face when she [says] ‘I’.”  He gets up to leave, threatened by this statement of individuality from a woman, and Peggy smiles.  Here she feels none of Eleanor’s need to make her conversational partners feel important and right, which spurs the indignation of modern men, such as North: “Damn women … curse their inquisitive little minds.  What did their ‘education’ amount to?  It only made her critical, censorious.” (Y376)  Perhaps Peggy has come to a point of balance; we see her letting herself be ignored only once – when she is talking to a deaf old man who thinks she is talking about something else.  (333-4)  She does not “trouble to explain” the mistake, and the reader, with relief, identifies this as a healthy, normal kind of self-suppression; Peggy has escaped the stunted, timid fate of her elders.

            Woolf herself perhaps felt somewhere between these two generations of women; it took her years to find her own voice in writing, and once she found it, it was a painful and treacherous gift to employ.  She must have envied the ease with which Peggy and Miss La Trobe defined themselves against the world’s expectations, and sympathized with Isa’s mixed experience of modern womanhood.  In any case, these two novels make a clear case that Woolf did not confine her feminism to her nonfiction essays; it was just as fully manifested in her novels.

Addison Godel, July 2002
with some revisions August 2006

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