[Vwoolf] The Equator

[Stuart N. Clarke]

I think it depended on what your governess taught you!

Turning to my mother’s school geography book – 1903?, but the map of Greece suggests a 1913? reprint – I see that it’s obvious that geography was a matter of learning by rote.  E.g. “Afghanistan ... is bounded on the North, by Turkestan; on the West, by Persia; on the South, by Baluchistan; and on the East, by India.”

Thus leading to simple uncontestable questions and answers, such as: Which of the four principal races of mankind is the most important, the most numerous and the most civilised?

As for the Equator, although the maps and diagrams show it, the explanation is unclear: “The Equator, and all the lines in this diagram, represent circles though two of them are drawn quite straight.”

Stuart

From: Neverow, Vara S. 
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2022 4:14 PM
To: Stuart N. Clarke 
Cc: VWOOLF listserv 
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] The Equator

Dear Stuart,

A rather intricate tracing of Mrs. Ross! And really intriguing contexts in Woolf's diaries and letters. Could the reference to the equator in Mrs. Dalloway have been a relatively commonplace gap in the understanding of geography? 

Vara

Vara Neverow
(she/her/hers)
Professor, English Department and Women's and Gender Studies Program
Editor, Virginia Woolf Miscellany
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT 06515
203-392-6717
neverowv1 at southernct.edu

I acknowledge that Southern Connecticut State University was built on traditional territory of the indigenous peoples and nations of the Paugussett and Quinnipiac peoples.  




Recent Publications:

Lead editor, Virginia Woolf: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury, 2020; with Jeanne Dubino, Kathryn Simpson, and Gill Lowe); Editor, Volume One, 1975-1984, Virginia Woolf: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury, 2020); Co-editor, The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and Contemporary Global Literature (Edinburgh, 2020; with Jeanne Dubino, Paulina Pająk, Catherine Hollis, and Celiese Lypka)




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From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2022 5:56 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: [Vwoolf] The Equator 

“to this day, ask her [Mrs Dalloway] what the equator was, and she did not know.” See also D1, 1 May 1918 “I remember once, when she [Mrs Ross] was translating a book by an early Italian traveller (she knew Italian perfectly, but spoke it with 
“to this day, ask her [Mrs Dalloway] what the equator was, and she did not know.”

See also D1, 1 May 1918

“I remember once, when she [Mrs Ross] was translating a book by an early Italian traveller (she knew Italian perfectly, but spoke it with a Churchillian defiance of accent) she came on the word Equator.  ‘Equator, what on earth is that, my dear?’ she asked me.  ‘It’s an imaginary line drawn round the earth, Aunt Janet.’  ‘Imaginary line; what nonsense.  I shall leave it out.’”
(Kenneth Clark, “Another Part of the Wood: A Self-portrait” (Coronet Books, 1976), p. 116)

For VW on Mrs Ross, see “A Passionate Apprentice”, Diary 21 Aug & 2 Sep 1929, L #485-6.


Stuart
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