<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default">Apropos the Oliver article on Woolf's "rudeness."</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large">
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<p><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">Elizabeth Bowen and Woolf were friends. Bowen and Charles</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro"> Ritchie, her lover, discussed
Woolf in 1956, and he ruefully noted in his journal that </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">Woolf's unpublished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 </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">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.”</span><span style="font-size:7pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro;color:rgb(0,0,250);vertical-align:4pt"> </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">Bowen believed the “spring and principle of her art was joy.”</span><span style="font-size:7pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro;color:rgb(0,0,250);vertical-align:4pt"> </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">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 </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:LbdmdxLlwdxgSssmpjAGaramondPro;font-style:italic">bored </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">and
irked by that tragic fiction which has been manufactured about her
since 1941.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">Pat Laurence</span></p><p><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:HnffbmKbtmjmVlffbfAGaramondPro">from my biography,<i> Elizabeth Bowen, A Literary Life</i></span></p>
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</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 5:58 PM Mark Scott via Vwoolf <<a href="mailto:vwoolf@lists.osu.edu" target="_blank">vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<div>As a Common Reader, my thoughts on this article centered on a couple of
things. </div>
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<div>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. <br><br>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.<br><br>Mark Scott<br>Common Reader </div>
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<div><b>From:</b> <a title="vwoolf@lists.osu.edu">Ellen
Moody via Vwoolf</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, September 11, 2021 6:56 AM</div>
<div><b>To:</b> <a title="mefoleyuk@gmail.com">Mary Ellen Foley</a> </div>
<div><b>Cc:</b> <a title="vwoolf@lists.osu.edu">Vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a> </div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Vwoolf] (no subject)</div></div></div>
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<div dir="ltr">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</div>
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<div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 9:42 AM Mary Ellen Foley
via Vwoolf <<a>vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex">
<div dir="ltr">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.)<br><br>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.)<br><br>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.
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<div>Unfortunately, I read this first thing this morning. I hadn't wanted to
begin the day so irritated!</div>
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<div>Mary Ellen</div></div></div>
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<div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 7:27 PM Andre Gerard via
Vwoolf <<a>vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex">
<div dir="ltr">Woolf as a guide to our troll tormented times: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-was-virginia-woolf-so-rude/__;!!KGKeukY!nf304ToEUjNd-Nsi_srJ4SrBkBCO1jUg3xAZQI-lYN5-9Mo3_0r0qTsgpJKtDF_daT8$" target="_blank">https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-was-virginia-woolf-so-rude/</a></div>_______________________________________________<br>Vwoolf
mailing list<br><a>Vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a><br><a href="https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf</a><br></blockquote></div>_______________________________________________<br>Vwoolf
mailing list<br><a>Vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a><br><a href="https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf</a><br></blockquote></div>
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