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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This is the writing prompt I’ve been waiting for!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">After having studied German literature and somehow passed out of English course work at the College of William and Mary, I found myself working at a Catholic boys’ military school in Richmond, VA, teaching not only German
but also American literature. Before my third year there, I was supposed to place a book on the summer reading list for the 11th graders. Not being all too familiar with Anglo-American teen-friendly literature, I asked my girlfriend for a recommendation. She
thought <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> might be a good choice. I had heard of Virginia Woolf (only from having heard the title of Albee’s play) and, having two Aunt Virginias myself, I figured she must also be American, if not also southern, as I was. So I put
<i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> on the reading list.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Boy, was I surprised when I picked up a used copy to read a week before school was to begin! I read and re-read the first five pages of the book several times before giving up and calling my girlfriend for help. Being
a bright Bryn Mawr graduate who loved the book and having friends from Brown and Swarthmore who were also more than willing to introduce me to the insights to be gained from the novel, she sat me down and, with her friends, taught me everything I needed to
know about tunnel and phallic symbolism to get the boys interested in the big, bad Woolf. Or so we thought.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Just to be on the safe side, though, I read all the secondary literature on Woolf and
<i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> to be found in the Richmond Public Library (this was 1988) and became enthralled by the many levels on which one could examine the novel. I had dealt with literature for many years and begun writing poetry and stories of my own, thus becoming
aware of writing from the inside out. Teaching this book would be a challenge, but I thought I was up to it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Unfortunately, 17 year-old boys are interested in only one thing, so I found myself dragging into the classroom a 6-foot grandfather’s clock which I found in the neighbor’s garbage. That phallic symbol, a constant reminder
of Big Ben’s leaden circles, remained in the classroom - and in the boys’ memories - long after I stopped teaching there.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">That was my first experience reading and teaching the book. The following year I moved to Germany and began studying English, where I took a course at the university on Woolf’s early novels. When we got to
<i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>, I got to teach the class because I had taught it before and the professor hadn’t. I thoroughly enjoyed
<i>The Voyage Out, Jacob’s Room</i> and <i>To the Lighthouse</i> as well as our discussions about life in London during the teens and twenties.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Soon after that seminar I taught it to three classes of elder German women in adult education classes. A few years later, after
<i>The Hours</i> had just been published, I taught the two together in an Introduction to Literature course at the University of Education. I had hoped to be able to explore Cunningham’s work on a literary level as well but was disappointed to find out how
lacking it was in the kind of depth and texture that I appreciated so much in Woolf’s work.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In the meantime, I had made the acquaintance of Isota Tucker Epps, who was a friend of my mother’s in Richmond. She was 80 and had just learned to paint because she wanted to do a series of paintings representing her
visions of Virginia Woolf’s works. Her painting teacher was the father of one of the students from that high school in Richmond where I first taught Woolf. I gave her a paper I had written about impressionism in Woolf’s early works and she commented on it
in her very thorough manner. She showed me her paintings and her first editions and we had a lovely talk about Woolf’s opus. Years later I would discover that there was an International Virginia Woolf Society and that she had once been the president of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I have since taught <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> a few more times at various universities and studied it with small reading groups and several friends. Delving into it again is something I can always count on to spark my intellectual
curiosity and put me in awe.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I have just splurged for my own copy of Helen Wussow’s
<i>British Library Manuscript of The Hours</i> and am working my way through it. It is like listening to early bootlegs of my favorite band, discovering ur-variations of future well-wrought melodies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">On a side note, last semester I visited a university seminar during which
<i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> was being taught. I realized it was the first time I had ever heard it being taught at that level. The focus was on the novel’s narrative style, which bored and confused both the students and me. During the tutorial, I tried to encourage
the students to pay attention to the lively prose and emotional situations within and among the characters so that they could enjoy the text as much as I did.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I am very much looking forward to Anne Fernald’s annotated edition of
<i>Mrs. Dalloway</i>, something I had always wanted to work on! <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Jim Martin<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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