chastity is nothing but ignorance—a most discreditable state of mind. We should admit only the unchaste to our society. “the truth has nothing to do with literature,” “that fiction is the mirror of life.IT FELT LIKE 300 PAGES NOT 551. A Haunted House★2. A Society★★★★★3. Monday or Tuesday★4. An Unwritten Novel★5. The String Quartet★6. Blue & Green★7. Kew Gardens★★8. The Mark on the Wall★★★★* the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us;* Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”* “Why,” she asked, “if men write such rubbish as this, should our mothers have wasted their youth in bringing them into the world?”* “Read us poetry!” I cannot describe the desolation which fell upon us as she opened a little volume and mouthed out the verbose, sentimental foolery which it contained. “It must have been written by a woman,” one of us urged. But no. She told us that it was written by a young man,* For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her shoe laces untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one of them would ever wish to marry her.* we drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men—how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed to get attached to one for life—* I venerated my mother for bearing ten; still more my grandmother for bearing fifteen; it was, I confess, my own ambition to bear twenty. We have gone on all these ages supposing that men were equally industrious, and that their works were of equal merit. While we have borne the children, they, we supposed, have borne the books and the pictures. We have populated the world. They have civilized it. But now that we can read, what prevents us from judging the results? Before we bring another child into the world we must swear that we will find out what the world is like.”* she had come to the conclusion that the Judges were either made of wood or were impersonated by large animals resembling man who had been trained to move with extreme dignity, mumble and nod their heads... But from the evidence she brought we voted that it is unfair to suppose that the Judges are men.* chastity is nothing but ignorance—a most discreditable state of mind. We should admit only the unchaste to our society. I vote that Castalia shall be our President.” “It is as unfair to brand women with chastity as with unchastity,” said Poll. “Some of us haven’t the opportunity either.* “that fiction is the mirror of life.* The only reason why we escaped with our lives over and over again is that men are at once so hungry and so chivalrous. They despise us too much to mind what we say.”* “the truth has nothing to do with literature,”* A good man, we had agreed, must at any rate be honest, passionate, and unworldly.* We agreed that it was the object of life to produce good people and good books.* “Once she knows how to read there’s only one thing you can teach her to believe in—and that is herself.”* for Heaven’s sake let us devise a method by which men may bear children! It is our only chance. For unless we provide them with some innocent occupation occupation we shall get neither good people nor good books; we shall perish beneath the fruits of their unbridled activity; and not a human being will survive to know that there once was Shakespeare!”* Ask any journalist, schoolmaster, politician or public house keeper in the land and they will all tell you that men are much cleverer than women.”* How can I bring my daughter up to believe in nothing?” she demanded. “Surely you could teach her to believe that a man’s intellect is, and always will be, fundamentally superior to a woman’s?”* If we hadn’t learnt to read,” she said bitterly, “we might still have been bearing children in ignorance and that I believe was the happiest life after all* would trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our bodies in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our souls.”* The tongue is but a clapper.* the tune, like all his tunes, makes one despair—I mean hope. What do I mean? That’s the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I could relish that.* All the time I’m dressing up the figure of myself in my own mind, lovingly, stealthily, not openly adoring it, for if I did that, I should catch myself out, and stretch my hand at once for a book in self- protection. Indeed, it is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed in any longer. Or is it not so very curious after all? It is a matter of great importance. Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people—what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes
Virginia is a quiet woman with an excitable mind. Chatty in the presence of enjoyable company yet prone to sink into silence and solitude. She puts one in touch with the myriad blubbering of the mind, the sporadic genius and how the both, while at odds, lend themselves to each other. With this collection of short stories, one is offered a peak into her process. The range of variety among her stories is something to note, yet most of the stories are characteristically in the mind than a sequence of events. A Society is a satire on the incompetence of society, that still chose to shut out women. It vaguely reminded me of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, with the girls all grown up and aware of their disenfranchisement from nearly every aspect of living that didn't involve cooking or a baby. These were privileged women who felt illiterate of so many thing and they sought to to ask questions by impersonating men in positions of influence. This was story was all the more amusing given the allusion to the Dreadnought Hoax.Blue & Green is about colours, about seeing the colours among other details. It's barely a page and could have been a poem, as could have Monday or Tuesday and A Haunted House. I might be slightly biased because these are my favourite colours and I've bored quite a few of my acquaintances rhapsodising about the special place in the palette that blue and to a lesser extent green(my argument is that green is a kind of blue) deserve. Kew Gardens reminds me of To the Lighthouse and perhaps it was the polished version of an experiment she orchestrated in Kew Gardens. Couples pass by a flower bed, where a snail absorbs its surroundings and attempts a manoeuvre around a leaf blocking its way. The couples are all of varying genders and ages, so are the power balances between them. The mindset of each couple of couple is more disjointed than in To The Lighthouse given that they aren't aware of the bed or the snail, but ever so often their contrast with the snail is readily apparent.A Mark on the Wall was without doubt my favourite. It is Woolf meditating. I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.She proceeds to catch the first thought and carefully following the thread from there. Every once in a while she realises that she was initially trying to discern a mark in the wall. It's an enjoyable flow of thoughts that reminded me of a form of meditation, Anapanasati, where one focuses on one's breathing. An untrained mind tends to wander and on awareness of the wandering it is brought back to the breathing. Unlike the jumble of thoughts that can harass a mind for attention, these thoughts have a calmer demeanour.* The collection as a whole has some humour to it. She takes a dig at The Times by noting that English Literature was in the top floor of the library while The Time at the very bottom. In An Unwritten Novel, she writes about how one can find anything in The Times if they looked for it. Later on she declares that it can't protect from a sorrow such as hers and in the last story about how it had nothing to offer. (view spoiler)[The presence of a snail in both Kew Gardens and A Mark on the wall made me burst out laughing. A Mark on the Wall is the last story in this collection, immediately after Kew Gardens and she realises that the mark was a snail on the wall. It made me laugh considering that Kew Gardens was roughly told from the perspective of a snail (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Monday Or Tuesday (2011)?
Eight short pieces from Woolf, some of which showcase her stream-of-consciousness style to good effect and some of which are merely impressionistic doodles, though still fine. I particularly liked five of them.'The Haunted House' is a brief ghost story, only like no other.'The Society' is very funny, a group of women deciding to forswear having children before they have used their education and liberty to look into the world of men to see if it's worthwhile continuing the race.'Monday or Tuesday' is a short prose-poem, and very lovely it is too.'An Unwritten Novel' is that stretch of imagination a writer must be indulging in all the time, taking note of a fellow passenger on a train and speculating about their story.'Kew Gardens' is a ramble in the park, a montage of color, sound and passing life.Nobody wrote like Woolf.
—Perry Whitford
Elizabeth Klett’s narration is very well suited to reading Woolf. She has a particularly clear style while her accent and her performance make the book a pleasure to listen to.This collection contains short works of descriptive prose as well as short stories. It is supposed to contain eight works, however A Haunted House is missing from the version I downloaded from Audible, while Blue and Green is included twice. It’s disappointing as I’d bet Klett recorded A Haunted House and the error has been introduced in post production. Otherwise the production quality is excellent.The standout piece from this collection is the short story A Society. This work alone is worth purchasing the collection for - it’s quite a giggle and has the depth and humour you’d expect. A quote from the first minute gives an idea of the humour:“After a time, so far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began, as usual, to praise men.” This is a story of a society in which women are brought up to breed and men are brought up to write (and paint and other artistic and scientific endeavours). When the women of the society question whether the men are keeping up their end of the bargain they embark on a very thorough and utterly delightful investigation.The rest of the collection is a mix of experiments with prose and observation and gives an interesting insight into the development of Woolf’s writing.As a whole the collection feels like the juvenilia of Virginia Woolf. It was published prior to her best known novels and some of the pieces give the impression of experimental writing or writing practice. There are definite similarities to her later works to be found here, and it is worthwhile reading for dedicated fans of Virginia Woolf who want to complete their collection or to observe how her writing developed over time.
—Rochelle
I've finally managed to read a complete work by Virginia Woolf. Her imagery when it comes to describing natural landscapes is stunning, her use of words, and mostly the way in which each tale in Monday or Tuesday makes you read twice, to be aware of the fact that our perceptions are perspectives that might not have to do with how reality is. It also denounces the situation of the women at the time, particularly in An Unwritten Novel and A Society. It also manages to talk about war in several opportunities, this nonsense, this state of destruction... but it's also this strong seeking of the truth. It's kind of a conflictive relationship that I have with her texts, I like them but I don't feel I am at the level of understanding what's being told in its entirety. Definitely a good introduction to her work. Even though I picked it on my own.
—Marie
