[Vwoolf] (no subject)

Sun Sep 12 00:34:43 EDT 2021

Apropos the Oliver article on Woolf's "rudeness."

Elizabeth Bowen and Woolf were friends. Bowen and Charles Ritchie, her
lover, discussed Woolf in 1956, and he ruefully noted in his journal
that Woolf's
unpublished diaries revealed that she “had no fondness for her friends
including E." When he related this to Bowen, she did not take offense,
coolly noting, “perhaps her affection was intermittent (as mine is for so
many people).” Bowen, in kind, related to Ritchie and in letters to
Rosamond Lehmann her dislike of Bloomsbury's "in-growingness" and
"smugness," inspiring feelings of claustrophobia. But she was drawn to Woolf,
her laughter and like-minded mischief—as well admiration for her writing,
"like no other." She loved her comic exuberance, and their friendship she
wrote, was “chiefly laughter and pleasure, and on entering, in her company,
into the rapture caused her by the unexpected, the spectacular, the
inordinate, the improbable, and the preposterous.” Bowen believed the
“spring and principle of her art was joy.” In 1958, she wrote to William
Plomer on the fringes of Bloomsbury, confiding that only he seemed “able to
bring back Virginia’s laughter—I get so bored and irked by that tragic
fiction which has been manufactured about her since 1941.”

Pat Laurence

from my biography,* Elizabeth Bowen, A Literary Life*

On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 5:58 PM Mark Scott via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
wrote:

> As a Common Reader, my thoughts on this article centered on a couple of
> things.
>
> I have been reading Woolf’s letters for some time now and I have finally
> reached the summer of 1939 when the Woolfs are about to move to Mecklenburg
> Square.  Around the time when the first concept for ‘The Waves’ began to
> emerge, I started to read the diary entries for the time periods that the
> correspondence covered.  (I had read the diaries some time before I had
> even acquired the six volumes of the letter.)  What struck me about the
> article with regard to Woolf’s alleged ‘nastiness’ was that the author was
> basing his judgments of Woolf’s character on written remarks that were made
> in journals that were not meant to be read by anybody but Woolf herself, my
> point being that she wasn’t verbally making these less than flattering
> comments directly to the people she was describing.  How many of us have
> had negative thoughts about people we encounter in our lives or
> acquaintances or even close friends or family?  Maybe we never verbalize
> these thoughts and they may be judgments or conclusions that flared up in a
> moment of annoyance or anger that we later dismissed or forgot.  It just so
> happens that Woolf recorded many of her rather pointed observations about
> people in her private diaries.  They were not meant to be made known to the
> people she described.  In other words, they were not malicious attacks made
> directly at human targets.  It is true that close replications of her
> remarks often ended up in her letters, especially letters written to her
> sister, Vanessa Bell.  But, again, that was private correspondence usually
> addressed to family or close friends that she knew she could trust not to
> pass those comments on to anyone who might repeat them to their objects.
>
> My other observation is that, as is usually the case, the tired,
> unfortunately repetitious description of Woolf as the mad, elitist,
> depressed writer who ultimately committed suicide leaves out what has been
> evident to me since I first read ‘Orlando’; Woolf’s incisive and often
> scintillating wit.  Maybe it says something about my own personality but I
> often find myself laughing at Woolf’s imaginative puncturing of what may or
> may not have been overly inflated egos.  It’s true that sometimes her jabs
> do feel like they were aimed at undeserving targets.  That being said, I
> would love to have been the proverbial fly on the wall during some of the
> conversations between Woolf and some of her close friends and family.
> Great intellect on display flavored with the spice of brilliant wit.
> That’s what I hear in my imagination.
>
> Mark Scott
> Common Reader
>
> *From:* Ellen Moody via Vwoolf
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 11, 2021 6:56 AM
> *To:* Mary Ellen Foley
> *Cc:* Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] (no subject)
>
> I thought it was appalling too, and asked myself  when will people tire of
> using what is popularly supposed of Virginia Woolf as  matter for a
> whipping post.  Ellen
>
> On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 9:42 AM Mary Ellen Foley via Vwoolf <
> vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:
>
>> Beware!  To my eye, at least, the article may begin as a comment on
>> troll-ery, but it became something else entirely, outlining Woolf's
>> supposed five deaths, just in case we haven't harped enough on her suicide,
>> dwelling on snobbery above all else, damning her work with faint praise,
>> and getting enough tiny details wrong that could have been checked, that
>> the effect was of contempt: the author  didn't bother to check.  (The worst
>> example, possibly: No, it doesn't matter how many stories the Stephen
>> family house had, unless you give the number of residents, undercount the
>> number of stories by a factor of two, and make a point about overcrowding.
>> With 5 above ground level and one below, the enormous family and their
>> servants did not occupy a 3-story house -- no big deal, except that it's
>> easily checkable, and he makes a point of how packed in they were, linking
>> that to her wish for a room of one's own, which of course is a mistaken
>> understanding of what she meant by "a room of one's own."  Even if he was
>> referring to the years before the top floor was added, this is very sloppy
>> work.)
>>
>> I made the mistake of reading some of the comments.  This is a civilized
>> site, so the comments were courteous, but that only means that many simply
>> used more polite language in dismissing Woolf in the same way she is
>> generally dismissed by detractors.  (If you aren't a member, you can see
>> only a selection of comments; I visited twice and was shown different
>> comments, but the selection was possibly not representative.)
>>
>> I totally agree that the Woolf who/that has been constructed in more
>> recent times serves as a figure on whom we can hang whatever ideas we like;
>> that is because this figure has been crafted by articles such as this one,
>> doing the same.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I read this first thing this morning. I hadn't wanted to
>> begin the day so irritated!
>>
>> Mary Ellen
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 7:27 PM Andre Gerard via Vwoolf <
>> vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Woolf as a guide to our troll tormented times:
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-was-virginia-woolf-so-rude/__;!!KGKeukY!hI_2Hskp8ya2eXl9Bcvo8Hk6iRZEp1cMk68LU8eUzNJ953cHwocuQjLC6IFqsYqMsQA$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-was-virginia-woolf-so-rude/__;!!KGKeukY!nf304ToEUjNd-Nsi_srJ4SrBkBCO1jUg3xAZQI-lYN5-9Mo3_0r0qTsgpJKtDF_daT8$>
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