[Vwoolf] Encountering Virginia Woolf

[Kristin Czarnecki]

OK, I'll jump in! Although my house was full of Virginia Woolf's works as I was growing up (many of my paperback copies are inscribed with my mother's or sister's name), I never read her until I was nearly one year out of college, living in Mannheim, Germany, for the year. I joined the library there and checked out To the Lighthouse one day, along with a stack of other things. In my tiny one-room "apartment," I read the entire book from start to finish in one sitting--mesmerized, intrigued, confused; I had never read anything like it before. When I finished, I turned it over and began again and was hooked from then on. As Diana says, thank you, Virginia.


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From: vwoolf-bounces+kristin_czarnecki=georgetowncollege.edu at lists.service.ohio-state.edu [vwoolf-bounces+kristin_czarnecki=georgetowncollege.edu at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] on behalf of Diana Swanson [dswanson at niu.edu]
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 2:42 PM
To: Vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Encountering Virginia Woolf

Hello Woolfians,

What a great thread of conversation!

I first read Virginia Woolf in my first year English class, called "Reading," at Amherst College in the fall of 1978. We were assigned A Room of One's Own. It was the first time I read something and thought "I want to write like that." Of course, I could never "write like that" but my professor did say that my short essay on A Room was "Woolfesque" or something to that effect. I loved the combination of humor, sarcasm, lyricism, intensity--and of course was electrified by the subject matter. I think Woolf's is probably still the most enlivening prose I've ever read. I have a feeling, but don't know for sure, that A Room was put on the common reading list for all the first year English class sections by one of the new, young, women faculty, at least one of whom was denied tenure later and the other went on to someplace else at some point. In my junior year, I got permission to write about Mrs. Dalloway in one of my English courses even though it was not on the syllabus.
After college, reading Three Guineas helped me decide whether and how to go to graduate school, to join that "procession of educated men."

Thank you, Virginia.

Diana

Diana L. Swanson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Women's Studies & English
Faculty Associate of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies
Faculty Associate of Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability, and Energy
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-6611
dswanson at niu.edu

>>> Eleanor McNees <Eleanor.McNees at du.edu> 8/23/2013 12:38 PM >>>
I've been reading these responses with interest as I think they would be great to share with students we're currently teaching. I honestly can't recall the first work by Woolf that I read, but I do remember that I decided not to take a course on the Bloomsbury Group my first year in college in 1969 because I had never heard of that group! I know I began teaching Woolf first in the 1970s, specifically To the Lighthouse, because I took high school students on a literary tour of the U.K., and we spent two nights in St. Ives. The characters in that novel and in her other works have remained with me for decades as I've aged and gained new perspectives on them. That E.M. Forster questioned her ability to create truly vital characters has always puzzled me.

Best wishes,
Eleanor
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Eleanor McNees
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Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

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