1

Special Author: Virginia Woolf Q3023

Autumn 2013
______________________________________________________________
Pam Thurschwell
Email: p.thurschwell@sussex.ac.uk

Office Arts B 222
Office Hours: TBA

Module Description

In this course we will focus on the work of one of the best-known writers of the twentieth
century, Virginia Woolf. This course aims to deepen your knowledge and understanding of
Woolfs work, both in its historical context and in terms of the kind of conceptual and
theoretical questions which her work has been seen to raise. It is designed to challenge the
kinds of preconceptions that readers often bring to Woolfs writing. We will consider what
might happen if we stop reading Woolf solely as a modernist, or as a woman writer; we
will pursue conceptual and historical frames that will illuminate her work still further.

By the end of the course, we will have read most of Woolfs novels, sampled her writing in
other genres, and become familiar with the critical reception of her work. In addition,
students will have learnt how to devise, structure, pursue, and realise an independent research
project.

Assessment

Seminar attendance and participation (weekly, 2 hours)
1 1000 word essay due week 8 (optional)
1 essay outline, due week 9
1 presentation
5000 word long essay

Always bring your books and texts of the essays/short stories to class with you!
I urge you to get a copy of The Complete Shorter Fiction, ed. Susan Dick (1985) and The
Crowded Dance of Modern Life (Penguin1993) edited by Rachel Bowlby, which is a great
collection of Woolfs essays.

All of the primary essays and short stories are also available online via the University of
Adelaide free ebook website: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/

Many of the recommended critical essays and primary reading for the week will be available
on the Study Direct site for the course. Please check the site each week before your seminar.

Week 1: What a Lark! What a Plunge!: Close Reading/Contextualizing Woolf
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Modern Fiction (1919)

Secondary Reading:
Jeremy Tambling, Repression in Mrs Dalloways London. New Casebooks: Mrs Dalloway
and To the Lighthouse. Ed. Su Reid. Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1993. 57-70.
2

J. Hillis Miller, Mrs Dalloway: Repetition as Raising of the Dead New Casebooks: Mrs
Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Ed. Su Reid. Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd,
1993. 45-56.

Week 2: Water I: Launching
The Voyage Out (1915)

Secondary Reading:
Ruotolo, Lucio P. Being Chaotic: The Voyage Out. The Interrupted Moment: A
View of Virginia Woolfs Novels. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1986. 19-46.

Week 3: Outside (London)
Night and Day (1919)
Kew Gardens
Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street
All stories are in The Complete Shorter Fiction, ed. Susan Dick (1985)
Street Haunting: A London Adventure (1927) Available online at
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91d/#chapter5

Secondary Reading:
Squier, Susan M. Virginia Woolf and London: The Sexual Politics of the City. Chapel
Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985. Chapters 4 and 5.
Bowlby, Rachel. Walking, women and writing: Virginia Woolf as flneuse. Still
Crazy After All These Years: Women, Writing and Psychoanalysis. London:
Routledge, 1992. 1-33. (CR)
Walkowitz, Rebecca L. Virginia Woolfs Evasion: Critical Cosmopolitanism and British
Modernisms. Bad Modernisms. Ed. Douglas Mao & Rebecca L. Walkowitz.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 119-144. (CR)

Week 4: Inside (Rooms and Minds)
Jacobs Room (1923)
Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown (1924) in The Captains Death Bed (London: Hogarth Press,
1950)
The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection (1929)
A Haunted House (1921)

Secondary Reading:
Laura Marcus, The Novel as Elegy: Jacobs Room and To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf.
Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers, 1997.
Clare Taylor, Helen. Architecture in Woolfs Fiction Virginia Woolf Miscellany.
(46): 1995. 4.


Week 5: Water II: Adrift on High Modernist Seas
The Waves (1931)

Secondary Reading:
DiBattista, Maria. The Waves: The Epic of Anon. Virginia Woolfs Major Novels:
The Fables of Anon. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980. 146-189.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Other People and the Human World. Phenomenology
3

of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1962. 346-365.

Week 6: Library visit to Special Collections/Woolf Archive (may need to be
rescheduled)

Week 7: Reading and Assessment Week

Week 8: Biography and Objects
Orlando (1928)
Flush : A Biography (1933)
Solid Objects (1920)

Secondary Reading:
Woolf, The Art of Biography (1939) Collected Essays (Vol 5), 221-28 (CR)
Bowlby, Rachel. Things. Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virginia
Woolf. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1997. 100-109.
Mao, Douglas. Solid Objects: Modernism and the Test of Production. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1998. 26-89.
Brown, Bill. The Secret Life of Things (Virginia Woolf and the Matter of Modernism),
Modernism/Modernity 6.2 (1999). 1-28. (CR)
Spiropoulou, Angeliki. Historical Fictions, Fictional Fashions and Time: Orlando as the
Angel of History Virginia Woolf, Modernity and History: Constellations with
Walter Benjamin (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Week 9: Politics
A Room of Ones Own (1929)
Three Guineas (1938)

Secondary Reading:
Showalter, Elaine. Virginia Woolf and the Flight into Androgyny. A Literature of
Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bront to Lessing. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1977. 263-297. (CR)
Moi, Toril. Introduction. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge, 1985. (CR)
Zwerdling, Alex. Anger and Conciliation in A Room of Ones Own and Three
Guineas. Virginia Woolf and the Real World. Berkeley: U of California P,
1986. 243-270.
Loy, Mina. Feminist Manifesto. The Lost Lunar Baedeker. Ed. Roger Conover.
Manchester: Carcanet, 1997. 153-56.
Goldman, Emma. Woman Suffrage. Anarchism and Other Essays. Filiquarian Publishing,
LLC, 2005. 149-63.

Week 10: War
Between the Acts (1941)
Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid(1940) Collected Essays (Vol. 4): 173-77. (CR)

Secondary Reading:
Zwerdling, Alex. Between the Acts and the Coming of War. Virginia Woolf and the
Real World. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986. 302-23. (CR)
Barrett, Michle. Virginia Woolf and Pacifism. Woolf in the Real World. Ed. Karen
V. Kukil. Clemson, South Carolina: Clemson U Digital P, 2005. 37-41. (CR)
4

Saint-Amour, Paul. Air War Prophecy and Interwar Modernism, Comparative Literature
Studies, Vol 42, No. 2 (2005)

Week 11: Art and Elegy
To the Lighthouse (1927)
A Sketch of the Past in Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind. London: Pimlico,
2002. 78-160. (CR)

Secondary Reading:
Woolf, Roger Fry: A Biography (1940)
Woolf, The Cinema (http://modvisart.blogspot.com/2006/04/virginia-woolf-
cinema-1926.html)
Auerbach, Eric. The Brown Stocking. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in
Western Literature. Trans. Willard Trask. (first published 1946). Also reprinted in
Rachel Bowlby (ed.) Virginia Woolf (Longman, 1992)-a very useful collection.
Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia (1917) in Penguin Freud Library Volume 11
On Metapsychology

Week 12: Representing Woolf
The Hours (2002) dir. Stephen Daldry

Workshop for long essay proposals.

Presentations

Each student will sign up for one presentation in the first class. Presentations will be no more
than ten minutes in length and will be done in consultation with the other people presenting
your week. Presentations may be based on one of the study questions I provide on Study
Direct, or you may introduce or discuss another aspect of Woolfs works that interests you.

These presentations can involve a close reading of a single passage of one of Woolfs novels,
or larger thematic or stylistic concerns. They should not be biographical: they are to focus on
the content of Woolfs writing, and not her life. They can, however, be on a topic you might
pursue for your final dissertation.

Additional Criticism

The critical bibliography on Woolf is very large, so the list below is not meant to be
exhaustive but to provide you with the starting points for your own research.

Banfield, Ann. The Phantom Table: Woolf, Fry, Russell and the Epistemology of Modernism
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000)
Beer, Gillian. Virginia Woolf: the Common Ground and Arguing with the Past
Bowlby, Rachel (ed.). Virginia Woolf (with a good annotated bibliography at the back)
Bowlby, Rachel. Feminist Destinations and Further Essays
Briggs, Julia (ed.). Virginia Woolf (1993), esp. essays by Hermione Lee, Gillian Beer, Julia
Briggs, Sandra Kemp.
DiBattista, Maria. Virginia Woolfs Major Novels (1980)
Froula, Christine. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde: War, Civilization and
Modernity (Columbia University Press, 2005)
5

Hussey, Mark The Singing of the Real World: The Philosophy of Virginia Woolfs Fiction
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1986) (on Woolf and philosophy)
Kane, Julie. Varieties of Mystical Experience in the Writings of Virginia Woolf 20
th

Century Literature 41:4 (Winter, 1995) 328-349
Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf (1996) (recent biography)
Levenback, Karen. Virginia Woolf and the Great War (Syracuse UP, 1998)
Light, Alison. Mrs Woolf and the Servants (London: Penguin, 2007)
McNees (ed.), Virginia Woolf: Critical Assessments, 4 vols (1992)
Marcus, Jane. Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy (ed) and Virginia Woolf: A
Feminist Slant
Marcus, Laura. Virginia Woolf
Minow Pinkney, Makiko, Virginia Woolf and the Problem of the Subject (1987)
Pridmore-Brown, Michele 1939-40: Of Virginia Woolf, Gramophones and Fascism PMLA
Vol 113, No. 3 (May 1998)
Raitt, Suzanne. To the Lighthouse. (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990)
Rice, TJ. Virginia Woolf: a Guide to Research (1994) (recommended for dissertations)
Squier, Susan M, Virginia Woolf and London: The Sexual Politics of the City (1985)
(especially chapters 4 and 5 on Night and Day and Mrs Dalloway)
Wolfe, Jesse. Bloomsbury, Modernism, and the Reinvention of Intimacy (2011)
Zwerdling, Alex. Virginia Woolf and the Real World. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1986)

5000 Word Long Essay

Your long essay should address a title from the list of suggested topics. If you wish to create
your own title or topic, please consult me before you submit a dissertation outline.

Some Suggested Long Essay Topics

1. Hermione Lee writes in her biography that Woolf claimed to loathe egotism. Discuss the
presentation of self or subjectivity in Woolfs work, perhaps in relation to notions of legacy,
naming, or obscurity.
2. Woolf is well known for portraying moments of being akin in formulation to the
Joycean epiphany. Consider her presentation of time (be it past, present, future, or infinite),
possibly in relation to things fleeting or ephemeral.
3. Eudora Welty writes: Virginia Woolfwas at least as interested in a beam of light as she
was in a tantrum (Reading and Writing 157). Trace the evolution of a particular object or
aspect of everyday life in Woolfs work, and set up an argument explaining the significance
of her continual return to particular things. You might consider, for instance, letters, flowers,
insects, clothing, food, windows, rooms, boats, the wind, light, or the sea.
4. Consider death and grieving in Woolfs writing.
5. Woolf is one of the most highly regarded authors of stream-of-consciousness narration.
But it is important to remember that neither she nor her characters are directly rendering their
thoughts on the page; in her fiction, a narrator always intervenes. Study two or three of
Woolfs narrators, and determine what we might understand about who they are and the role
they play in Woolfs writing. Are they authoritative, omniscient, judgmental, poetic, or
occasionally bored? How do they affect the structure, tone, and content of Woolfs writing?
Students who choose this question might want to consider Wayne Booths The Rhetoric of
Fiction, particularly Chapter 3, All Authors Should Be Objective, and Chapter 6, Types
of Narration.
6

6. In Woolfs early works in particular, she spends a great deal of time and energy
considering the strictures of tradition, be it moral, social, or political. Examine Woolfs
presentation of tradition in one early and one later work. Historical research will be necessary
for this topic.
7. Consider Woolfs presentation of monarchy and/or the servant classes.
8. Why are social occasions so central to Woolfs novels? Think about events such as
dinners, dances, parties, and, with particular reference to Orlando, carnivals.
9. Discuss the representation of race, Englishness and Empire in any two Woolf texts.
10. Discuss the representation of war and the role of language in war in any three texts by
Woolf.
11. How inclusive is Woolf as a model for feminist criticism?
12. Discuss the representation of womens and/or mens sexuality in three Woolf texts (for
instance, A Room, Between the Acts, Mrs Dalloway.)
13. Writing at a time when psychoanalysis was coming to the fore as a way of understanding
human nature, Woolf is overtly concerned with representing all sides of human experience,
including those pre-linguistic sensations we can never quite put into words. Consider how
Woolf represents sensation or the unrepresentable in two of her fictional works.
14. Consider the role of visual art in relation to one or more of Woolfs works.
15. The portrayal of animals in literature has recently received a great deal of critical
attention. Formulate an argument about Woolfs animal lovers such as Ralph Denham of
Night and Day, Elizabeth and Richard Dalloway, and Susan in The Waves.
16. What role do the spaces and environments characters inhabit play in Woolfs texts? You
may want to think about how Woolf represents space, how the characters relate to or are
effected by various environments, and places/spaces Woolf returns to repeatedly in her work.
16. Any original subject you choose; please run your idea past me before you begin.

Essay Plan Guidelines

Your plan should include:
a) An outline of the topic you intend to explore (approximately two A4 sheets, double
spaced)
b) A list of the texts by Woolf you will concentrate on
c) A bibliography of critical sources you have consulted and/or intend to consult in
preparation for your dissertation

Selecting and defining a topic:

To help you define the topic you want to research you should ask yourself the following
questions:

a) What is the central question I want to ask? e.g. What is the connection between madness
as a psychological discourse and imperialism as a political one in Woolfs work? You can
also formulate this question as a hypothesis, e.g. Woolfs work sets out to establish a direct
causal link between the discourse of madness and that of Empire - the madness and
irrationality of Empire is the direct cause of the madness and irrationality of its subjects.

This question should emerge out of your reading both of Woolfs texts and of the critical
texts on Woolf. It should be as specific as possible phasing such as the world and the self
in Woolfs work are best avoided. Remember that your aim is to build an argument, i.e. you
should have a point you want to put across rather than just a topic you want to illustrate with
7

apt quotations and references.

b) How am I going to address this question? Using the example above, consider: I will
analyse the ways in which madness and politics are intertwined in Woolfs texts through the
interplay of character, language and setting.

This then needs to be broken down into smaller bits, giving some examples, e.g., Septimus
and Clarissa in Mrs Dalloway, Rachel and Helen in The Voyage Out, the linguistic and
stylistic differences between the two texts, the settings in England and South America, etc.

c) How will I organise my essay? What subsections will it have? Once you have determined
the various themes and ideas you will address, compile examples from your primary texts
(Woolfs writings) and secondary texts (criticism and research) under those headings.
Remember to keep track of citations and page numbers so you can return to this information
as needed.

d) How do I choose a theme and find relevant material? A good starting point is to choose
one critical essay you liked or found helpful and then use its notes and bibliography to
identify other relevant texts. MLA Bibliography is a good on-line data base for articles and
books published worldwide. Some hard-copy bibliographies of works on Woolf can also be
found in the library.

Your provisional bibliography should list a minimum of 10-12 texts. You may use web sites
as starting points for your research, but unless they are peer-reviewed sources (ask if unsure),
they will not be considered credible if cited within the body of your essay.

You may use any bibliographical style you choose as long as you use it consistently. I would
recommend MLA style http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/2/ or the Chicago
Manual of Style system http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html.