Category Archives: Woolf, Virginia

A Century Of Women – 1920’s

I have fallen behind in reviews for both of my Century projects, so I’m going to be posting quick, short, multi-book posts until I catch up. Which will probably be never.

I haven’t quite finished up the 1920’s yet, with 1920, 1921 & 1928 still open. This year, I’ve finished books for 1923, 1925 & 1928.

Anderby WoldAnderby Wold
by Winifred Holtby
Rating: ★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1923
Genre: fiction
Pages: 278
ReRead?: No
Project: 2025 read my hoard, a century of women

Mary Robson is a young Yorkshire woman, married to her solid, unromantic cousin, John. Together they battle to preserve Mary's neglected their beloved farm, Anderby Wold. This labour of love - and the benevolent tyranny of traditional Yorkshire ways - has made Mary old before her time.

Then into her purposeful life comes David Rossitur. Young, red-haired, charming, how can she help but love him? But David is from a different England - radical and committed to social change. As their confrontation and its consequences inevitably unfold, Mary's life and that of the calm village of Anderby are changed forever.


I finished Anderby Wold, published in 1923, in February. I am a huge fan of Winifred Holtby’s South Riding – so much so that I have been considering rereading it. I didn’t like Anderby Wold nearly as much as that one, although it was still an enjoyable read. In some ways, it felt like an obvious precurser to South Riding, set in the same sort of a location and with similar, if less well-defined, characters. Anderby Wold was Holtby’s first novel, but feels like a mature novel nonetheless.

There are also connections to be made to the work of Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte’s lesser known book, Shirley, both of which focus on the changes that industrialization and modernity bring to small, rural British farming communities.

Mrs. DallowayMrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: May 14, 1925
Genre: classic
Pages: 197
ReRead?: Yes
Project: 2025 read my hoard, a century of women

In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation while in her mind she is much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house, she is flooded with far-away remembrances. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices she has made, hesitantly looking ahead to growing old. Undeniably triumphant, this is the inspired novelistic outline of human consciousness.


I just finished Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway last week, so it is fresh in my mind. Published in 1925, it takes place on a single day in June (June 18 seems to be the day that has been designated as Dalloday), so I decided to re-read it on its centenary. I didn’t finish it one day, which is apparently a thing, where people read Mrs. Dalloway contemporaneously with the times that are vaguely identified within the novel by the ringing of Big Ben. I had forgotten how much of the novel is spent away from Clarissa Dalloway, in the lives of other characters as they move through London.

I have not read a lot of Woolf’s work. I’ve previously posted about her first novel, The Voyage Out, and I’ve read her (second most) famous novel To The Lighthouse, although it’s been years.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway really worked for me this time. I often struggle with stream of consciousness, but with this reading, I was really able to let go of my need for linearity and plot and just immerse myself in the words. It has inspired me to seek out more Woolf over the next few years.

Young AnneYoung Anne
by Dorothy Whipple
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1927
Genre: fiction
Pages: 292
ReRead?: No
Project: a century of women

Young Anne (1927), was Dorothy Whipple’s debut novel. It is about the first twenty years of a girl’s life: she lives at home mostly looked after by the kindly Emily, goes to school, falls in love and finally marries someone else.

Young Anne is Dorothy Whipple’s first and most autobiographical novel.


I can never go wrong reading Dorothy Whipple. This was my third of her novels, after The Priory (my favorite so far) and Because of the Lockwoods. There is something about her books that are completely engaging to me; each time I have started a Whipple, I haven’t been able to put it down until I finish the last page. This is true even when her books are very long – I spent five hours on my couch reading The Priory. Young Anne was my least favorite of the three so far, but was not an exception to this rule.

Young Anne is Whipple’s first novel, published in 1927, and is a bildungsroman of the title character who seems to be a bit of a stand-in for Dorothy herself. We follow Anne from childhood, through first love, first job, and marriage to a much older and wealthy doctor.

I feel like I could read all of Whipple’s novels in about two weeks, they are so engaging. But, if I were to do that, then I would have entirely run out of Whipples and have no more to anticipate. So, instead, I am spreading out the reading. I actually own one of them, Someone at a Distance, which is sitting on my book cart, waiting for me to pick up.

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

The Voyage OutThe Voyage Out
by Virginia Woolf
Publication Date: February 3, 1915
Genre: classic
Pages: 375

Woolf’s first novel is a haunting book, full of light and shadow. It takes Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose and their niece, Rachel, on a sea voyage from London to a resort on the South american coast. “It is a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an american whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis”


My personal experiences with Virginia Woolf have historically been fraught. I want to love her – she is iconic, so important in the pantheon of women in literature and feminism that she very nearly stands alone. But she is also impenetrable, a cipher for which I, sadly, lack the necessary decoder ring with which to make sense of her. Her writing is achingly, heartstoppingly beautiful, and yet I find that I understand almost none of it.

It was with some delight, then, that I began reading her first, and most autobiographical, novel, The Voyage Out. Written in narrative style that makes sense to my admittedly limited brain (i.e., linear) it contains her trademark gorgeous language. There is so much in it to admire, as well. Rachel, the main character, is an interesting character – a young woman who has been sheltered from everything except music, the product of a strange upbringing in an oppressive society. One of the matronly characters says about Rachel:

This girl, though twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and, until I explained it, did not know how children were born. Her ignorance upon other matters as important” (here Mrs. Ambrose’s letter may not be quoted) . . . “was complete. It seems to me not merely foolish but criminal to bring people up like that. Let alone the suffering to them, it explains why women are what they are—the wonder is they’re no worse. I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though still a good deal prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is more or less a reasonable human being. Keeping them ignorant, of course, defeats its own object, and when they begin to understand they take it all much too seriously.

Woolf approaches feminist ideas obliquely, through several characters. Mrs. Ambrose, above, talking about the sheltering of women. Mr. Dalloway (yes, that Mr. Dalloway), talking about suffragettes:

“Oh, I’m entirely with you there,” said Dalloway. “Nobody can condemn the utter folly and futility of such behaviour more than I do; and as for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has the right to vote in England! That’s all I say.” The solemnity of her husband’s assertion made Clarissa grave. “It’s unthinkable,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re a suffragist?”

Or, this quote, from the young man who ends up as Rachel’s love interest:

“I’ve often walked along the streets where people live all in a row, and one house is exactly like another house, and wondered what on earth the women were doing inside,” he said. “Just consider: it’s the beginning of the twentieth century, and until a few years ago no woman had ever come out by herself and said things at all. There it was going on in the background, for all those thousands of years, this curious silent unrepresented life.

This curious silent unrepresented life. This isn’t entirely true, of course, because women have been part of fiction since fiction was written, although their stories were primarily told by men. But, still, it is true, right? Women did not lead public lives, in the same sense that men did. Their lives were entirely private, lived out in the quiet, domestic domain. She talks a great deal about loneliness, about the way that people live out their lives in solitary fashion, even when surrounded by others.

The Voyage Out takes a turn late in the book, into something that, given that it was written by Woolf, I might have expected. But, I didn’t. I won’t say more, because I don’t want to spoil. But, for readers who struggle with Woolf, this book is a good place to begin.