[Vwoolf] Virginia wasn't the only one

Thu Sep 29 14:25:03 EDT 2022

Thanks for this discussion everyone. Quite by chance, I’m reading Emily Cockayne’s fascinating book Rummage (Rummage by Emily Cockayne | Waterstones<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781781258521__;!!KGKeukY!wDWGaUjUsvR58Wx1pqzJPRRKkrHzQaRp6o_hn0BGuDirhL6QWyhjUwOKkHATNSZTfZOvu8mazlT2PfmY5-GOQlwZ3042$  >), about the British obsession with recycling and re-using (she takes her narrative from the 1990s back to the 1630s). It strikes me that, whilst Duckworth was snobbishly against rummaging, Virginia Woolf made it an art form, including buying books to re-bind for herself, or buying books and repurposing them as notebooks. Leonard Woolf was also famously thrifty and innovative with his tendency to re-use and repurpose. So as Vara says, Woolf was able to move out of George’s Kensington and into Bloomsbury where she found people after her own heart.

Bella Woolf gets a mention in Cockayne’s book (pp. 86-87) for her article in Quiver (April 1919: ‘The Quiver Army of Helpers’), where she appeals to the middle classes to send in pieces of cloth, velvet and fur to be used in occupational therapy projects by hospitalized WWI veterans. Cockayne quotes: ‘We had bags made from a bishop’s and a general’s top hats, bags of historic interest!’

Which perhaps leads nicely on to Miss La Trobe and her mock-up mockery of the great and good…

Best wishes
Jane

Jane de Gay
Professor of English Literature, Leeds Trinity University

From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Neverow, Vara S. via Vwoolf
Sent: 29 September 2022 18:44
To: Sarah M. Hall <smhall123 at yahoo.co.uk>; Stuart N. Clarke <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>; Gill <gill.lowe1 at btopenworld.com>
Cc: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia wasn't the only one

Being punished for wearing the wrong fabric (as determined by a well-off man who offers no financial support, only criticism) is definitely part of the shaming of women. Also, there's the brutal fact that the sleazy leering man strips the woman
Being punished for wearing the wrong fabric (as determined by a well-off man who offers no financial support, only criticism) is definitely part of the shaming of women. Also, there's the brutal fact that the sleazy leering man strips the woman dressed in her inappropriate clothing naked in a metaphorical way by insulting and savaging her publicly. This encounter must have caused Virginia to cast away money of which she barely had enough to spend on the dresses required by George's fancy standards. And it's evocative of Bloomsbury rebellion in style and women's finances in Three Guineas.

Thank you, Stuart, Gill, and Sarah!

Vara

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

I acknowledge that Southern Connecticut State University was built on traditional territory of the indigenous peoples and nations of the Paugusett and Quinnepiac peoples.
________________________________
From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu>> on behalf of Sarah M. Hall via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2022 1:28:33 PM
To: Stuart N. Clarke <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com<mailto:stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>>; Gill <gill.lowe1 at btopenworld.com<mailto:gill.lowe1 at btopenworld.com>>
Cc: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Virginia wasn't the only one

You beat me to it, Gill. Upholstery fabric comes in some very attractive designs and would presumably be much more hard-wearing than most clothing fabrics. I'm rather tempted . . . Sarah Sarah M. Hall Executive Council, Virginia Woolf Society
You beat me to it, Gill.

Upholstery fabric comes in some very attractive designs and would presumably be much more hard-wearing than most clothing fabrics. I'm rather tempted . . .

Sarah

Sarah M. Hall
Executive Council, Virginia Woolf Society of GB
Web: virginiawoolfsociety.org.uk
Facebook: @VWSGB
Twitter: @VirginiaWoolfGB
Instagram: @virginiawoolfsociety

On Thursday, 29 September 2022 at 16:39:36 BST, Gill via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:

Reminded me of the recycled curtains in *The Sound of Music*. Sent from my iPhone On 29 Sep 2022, at 16: 33, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf@ lists. osu. edu> wrote:  ‘On an allowance of fifty pounds it was difficult, even for the skilful,
Reminded me of the recycled curtains in *The Sound of Music*.

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D8D436.FDFBA6C0]
Sent from my iPhone

On 29 Sep 2022, at 16:33, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:

‘On an allowance of fifty pounds it was difficult, even for the skilful, and I had no skill, to be well dressed of an evening. A home dress, made by Jane Bride, could be had for a pound or two; but a party dress, made by Mrs Young, cost fifteen

‘On an allowance of fifty pounds it was difficult, even for the skilful, and I had no skill, to be well dressed of an evening. A home dress, made by Jane Bride, could be had for a pound or two; but a party dress, made by Mrs Young, cost fifteen guineas. The home dress therefore might be, as on one night that comes back to mind, made cheaply but eccentrically, of a green fabric, bought at Story’s, the furniture shop. It was not velvet; nor plush; something betwixt and between; and for chairs, presumably, not dresses. Down I came one winter’s evening about 1900 in my green dress; apprehensive, yet, for a new dress excites even the unskilled, elated. All the lights were turned up in the drawing room; and by the blazing fire George sat, in dinner jacket and black tie, cuddling the dachshund, Schuster, on his knee. He at once fixed on me that extraordinarily observant scrutiny with which he always inspected our clothes. He looked me up and down for a moment as if I were a horse brought into the show ring. Then the sullen look came into his eyes; the look which expressed not simply aesthetic disapproval; but something that went deeper. It was the look of moral, of social, disapproval, as if he scented some kind of insurrection, of defiance of his accepted standards. I knew myself condemned from more points of view than I could then analyse. As I stood there I was conscious of fear; of shame; of something like anguish—a feeling, like so many, out of all proportion to its surface cause. He said at last: “Go and tear it up.” He spoke in a curiously tart, rasping, peevish voice; the voice of the enraged male; the voice which expressed his serious displeasure at this infringement of a code that meant more to him than he could admit.’
(“Moments of Being”, 2nd edn, Hogarth Press, 1985, pp. 150-1)

‘The pianist seated herself at the piano. The cellist adjusted his stool.  Silence fell on the audience.
“She’s wearing brocade, my dear.”
Sister Monica Joan’s articulation was faultless, and ... the acoustics at All Saints are superb. Her stage whisper, which at its best could penetrate a railway station at rush hour, reached every corner of the church.
“We used to do that in the 1890s; cut down some old curtains, and make a second best dress out of them. I wonder whose curtains she got hold of?”
The pianist glared ...’
(Jennifer Worth, “Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s” (London: Phoenix, 2008), p. 308)

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