[Vwoolf] Woolf & tramping girls

Fri Feb 28 06:51:52 EST 2025

Yes, a wonderful passage, one that displays how for Woolf self-analysis can have a thoroughly ethical dynamic. She steps back and distances herself from her immediate reaction to the two girls (I’ll use her term), categorizing it as “instinct,” and implying that it is this instinct that leads her to see them as “angular, awkward and assertive.” We find this same process of fixing on an emotional state and then attempting to trace their roots in Mrs Dalloway when Clarissa suddenly asks herself: “But – but – why did she suddenly feel, for no reason that she could discover, desperately unhappy?” She searches her memory for interactions with various characters and finally locates the source in the criticism levelled at her parties by Richard and Peter (Page 133 in the Hogarth ed).

What can we add to, or what lies behind, Woolf’s “instinct” and her response to the two tramping girls? Top of the list is social class. “City clerks or secretaries”: in other words, I assume, lower middle class. What causes Woolf to so categorize the girls? Perhaps their clothing. I’m not an expert on the history of female dress, but I assume that at this time “short skirts” could be rather lower than we might assume today; perhaps knee-length, but certainly shorter than Woolf herself would be wearing in public.

Her assumption seems to be that working-class girls would not be backpacking and neither would posh, upper-class girls. Her chosen adjectives are hardly in themselves pejorative, rather the opposite: “resolute, sunburnt, dusty”; “angular, awkward and self-assertive.” But attached to a city clerk or secretary they suggest an independence and will that are worrying when associated with girls of this social class. In the first half of the twentieth century walking for pleasure was an activity very much associated with advanced views on such matters as the nature and role of women, and with unconventional dress. A key word was the word “tramp,” used where today “hike” or “backpack” might be expected.

Here’s a short passage from Joseph Conrad’s novel Chance (1913).

“Little Fyne’s marriage was quite successful. There was no design at all in it. Fyne, you must know, was an enthusiastic pedestrian. He spent his holidays tramping all over our native land. His tastes were simple. He put infinite conviction and perseverance into his holidays. At the proper season you would meet in the fields, Fyne, a serious-faced, broad-chested, little man, with a shabby knap-sack on his back, making for some church steeple. He had a horror of roads. He wrote once a little book called the ‘Tramp’s Itinerary,’ and was recognised as an authority on the footpaths of England. So one year, in his favourite over-the-fields, back-way fashion he entered a pretty Surrey village where he met Miss Anthony. Pure accident, you see. They came to an understanding, across some stile, most likely. Little Fyne held very solemn views as to the destiny of women on this earth, the nature of our sublunary love, the obligations of this transient life and so on. He probably disclosed them to his future wife. Miss Anthony’s views of life were very decided too but in a different way.”

What is fine about Woolf’s diary passage is the manner in which she uncovers the social and cultural prejudices that lie behind her condemnation of the two girls, then resists and rejects it. (Conrad, in contrast, mocks where Woolf indulges in self-criticism and attempts to expose and reject her cultural prejudices.)

Jeremy

________________________________
Fra: Sarah M. Hall <smhall123 at yahoo.co.uk>
Sendt: torsdag 27. februar 2025 21:26
Til: Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>; Anne Fernald <fernald at fordham.edu>
Kopi: vwoolf listserve <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Emne: Re: [Vwoolf] Woolf & tramping girls

Thanks, Anne and Jeremy, what a lovely passage, reminiscent of summer. With your help I've pinpointed this to 31 July (D3 104), a composite entry with several subheadings: these lines are under 'Wandervögeln', which was apparently a German youth movement (trans. as 'migratory birds'). The OED online says:

The earliest known use of the noun Wandervogel [singular] is in the 1920s.

OED's earliest evidence for Wandervogel is from 1928, in the writing of D. H. Lawrence, writer.

But of course VW's use of the plural beats this by two years. And presumably the term was in common use in Germany long before either of them.

Sarah

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

On Thursday, 27 February 2025 at 16:37:44 GMT, Anne Fernald via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

“Two resolute, sunburnt, dusty girls in jerseys and short skirts, with packs on their backs, city clerks, or secretaries, tramping along the road in the hot sunshine at Ripe. My instinct at once throws up a screen, which condemns them: - think
“Two resolute, sunburnt, dusty girls in jerseys and short skirts, with packs on their backs, city clerks, or secretaries, tramping along the road in the hot sunshine at Ripe. My instinct at once throws up a screen, which condemns them: - think them in every way angular, awkward and self. assertive. But all this is a great mistake. These screens shut me out. Have no screens, for screens are made out of our own in-tegument; and get at the thing itself, which has nothing whatever in common with a screen. The screen-making habit, though, is so universal that probably it preserves our sanity. If we had not this device for shutting people off from our sympathies we might perhaps dissolve utterly; separateness would be impossible. But the screens are in the excess; not the sympathy.”— 1926

Just as terrific as I remembered.

Sent from Gmail Mobile

On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 11:29 AM Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no<mailto:jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>> wrote:
A Writer's Diary p. 97,

J

________________________________
Fra: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu>> på vegne av Anne Fernald via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Sendt: torsdag 27. februar 2025 15:13
Til: vwoolf listserve <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>>
Emne: [Vwoolf] Woolf & tramping girls

Good morning, Woolfians, I have a recollection of a diary entry (or perhaps a letter) where Woolf encounters a couple young women tramping with rucksacks, but I can’t find it nor can I even figure out how it would be indexed. Does this ring
Good morning, Woolfians,

I have a recollection of a diary entry (or perhaps a letter) where Woolf encounters a couple young women tramping with rucksacks, but I can’t find it nor can I even figure out how it would be indexed.

Does this ring a bell? Can you point me in the right direction?

Thank you,

Anne

Sent from Gmail Mobile
_______________________________________________
Vwoolf mailing list
Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20250228/35078ea6/attachment.html>