[Vwoolf] The Times view on Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury bust: Culture Clash 17 February 2022

[Marielle O'Neill (1806529) PHD]

Dear Woolfians,

Please see The Times op-ed below:

This monument to the great modernist author should be left in peace

In the punning title of the Edward Albee play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the answer turns out to be a local authority in north London. Camden council is conducting a review of how to make monuments in the borough more “inclusive”, and among the potential targets is one commemorating a famed local author. Woolf, who took her own life in 1941, was among the bohemian figures who made up the Bloomsbury Group of artists and intellectuals in the area. A bronze bust of her stands outside her home in Tavistock Square.

Its peace may yet be disturbed. With a mandate to ensure an “accurate, thorough and inclusive” approach, bureaucrats are conducting an audit of the council’s monuments. The sculpture may be accompanied by a public notice that Woolf held some views that diverge from modern mores. Her work contains phrases that can be interpreted as racial epithets, and she participated in a celebrated hoax in 1910 in which she and her friends dressed in exotic costumes and darkened their faces.

Enough. It is to the good that British society is more sensitive than it was a generation ago, let alone a century ago, to issues of race. It is also integral to historical research and literary criticism to revise reputations. But it is absurd to reduce Woolf’s significance to the question of how far she exemplified the tastes of Camden’s contemporary inquisitors. She was first and foremost an artist.

There is little plot or suspense in her work, but Woolf depicted life and character, and she did it with immense skill. Her 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, for example, stands out for the pathos of the depiction of its protagonists Mr and Mrs Ramsay. There is quite enough cultural philistinism surrounding the interpretation of this most skilled of modernist authors. Camden’s council officials should forgo the temptation to add to it with irrelevant censoriousness.

Warm wishes,
Marielle

Marielle O’Neill
Postgraduate Researcher, Leeds Trinity University
Executive Council Member, Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
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Programming Co-chair, Outside/rs 2022 Conference
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m.oneill at leedstrinity.ac.uk
Pronouns: She/Her




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