The Voyage Out (Collins Classics)

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Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provides Woolf with an opportunity to satirise Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs Dalloway. Two of the other characters were modelled after important figures in Woolf's life. St John Hirst is a fictional portrayal of Lytton Strachey and Helen Ambrose is to some extent inspired by Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell. [7] Rachel's journey from a cloistered life in a London suburb to freedom, challenging intellectual discourse, and self-discovery very likely reflects Woolf's own journey from a repressive household to the intellectual stimulation of the Bloomsbury Group. [8] Toward the novel's end, Rachel Vinrace dies of a fever.

Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives’ Tale (London: Chapman & Hall, 1908) p. 36. (Hereafter all references to this novel appear parenthetically within the text.) Less formally experimental than her later novels, The Voyage Out none-theless clearly lays bare the poetic style and innovative technique–with its multiple figures of consciousness, its detailed portraits of characters’ inner lives, and its constant shifting between the quotidian and the profound–that are the signature of Woolf’s fiction. E. M. Forster dramatises the double moral standard in Howards End. In the course of this novel, Margaret Wilcox finds herself called upon to forgive her husband for having had a mistress. Mr Wilcox himself, however, is unable to forgive Margaret’s sister for becoming pregnant by a married man. Forster weakens the effect of his novel, though, by inserting passages of didactic commentary in his own voice into the text, which destroy our ‘belief’ in his fictional characters. The way in which women are sexually exploited by men such as Mr Wilcox is far more persuasively illustrated in a novel like Ivan Turgenev’s On the Eve (trans. C. E. Turner (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1871)) or Rosamond Lehmann’s The Weather in the Streets (London: Collins, 1936) in which the reader is drawn to identify completely, and therefore to sympathise, with the heroine. For a discussion of didacticism in Howards End see Bayley’s The Uses of Division, pp. 27–35. The Modern Library is proud to include Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out–together with a new Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham. Published to acclaim in England in 1915 and in America five years later, The Voyage Out marks Woolf’s beginning as one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and prolific writers. The world of the Belle Epoque is painted in all its splendour and natural self-confidence while containing all the signs of a world soon to be changed forever by World War I. This truly is a novel of modernity in the making, showing the old values still in place, but questioned more and more. Just like Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, published the same year, the characters increasingly see life as something without greater purpose, something meaningless and thrilling at the same time.Instead we are presented with what Rachel Vinrace calls for during the events of the novel –“Why don’t people write about the things they do feel?” . Despite all the symbolism of a first journey away from home, a first love affair, and the dawning of mature consciousness which Rachel experiences, the bulk of the novel is taken up with what people say and think about each other. This was a bold alternative to the plot-driven novels of the late Victorian era. Despite the annoying extra tour the other day, I continue to read "A Voyage Out" while commuting. I am most definitely the only person reading a book on the train, while everybody else is using a smartphone for various kinds of entertainment - almost anything actually except talking - which was its only purpose not that long ago. In the calm and quiet train where people mutely play phone (phony) games, I can't help bursting out laughing, very loudly, reading this: The Voyage Out was unlike anything else that had been published, and so critical reception was mixed. In E.M. Forester‘s review, he wrote:

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf. It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s plot, characters and main themes, including women’s position in society and the limitations of words as a mode of expression. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Woolf. Virginia. The Voyage Out. Modern Library, 2000.

Woolf’s first novel straddles the conventions of realism inherited from the 19th century and the new, experimental fiction of the 20th. The Sydney text tells an important part of this story. Eric Warner makes this point when he remarks that ‘Rather than let Rachel fall into the end of banal routine and sacrificed spirit, [Woolf] kills the girl off with an unnamed tropical fever’. In contrast, in The Waves, the ‘contagion of the world’s slow stain’ feared in The Voyage Out is realised (see Eric Warner, ‘Some Aspects of Romanticism in the Work of Virginia Woolf’ (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1980) pp. 119, 373). A remark which Alice van Buren Kelley makes about Woolf’s second novel links it with The Voyage Out: ‘ Night and Day ends before the lovers can experience those blows to vision that life in the real world invariably inflicts upon those who look for unity’ (Kelley, Virginia Woolf, p. 62). So the story maunders on, and the fact that it is crowded with incident, most of it futile, and that the clever talk by everyone continues in a confusing cataract in every chapter, does not save it from becoming extremely tedious. Woolf began work on The Voyage Out by 1910 (perhaps as early as 1907) and had finished an early draft by 1912. The novel had a long and difficult gestation; it was not published until 1915, as it was written during a period in which Woolf was especially psychologically vulnerable. [1] She suffered from periods of depression and at one point attempted suicide. [2] The resultant work contained the seeds of all that would blossom in her later work: the innovative narrative style, the focus on feminine consciousness, sexuality and death. [3]

But this is a Woolf novel, perched astride two centuries. It is Woolf’s first novel in fact, the idea for which she developed as early as 1905 when she herself was Rachel’s age but already seeing the world not as Rachel does but rather as the older, more free-spirited and less anchored-in-time character, Helen might. And, like Helen, Woolf looks forward in this book, not only towards the freedoms that women will gain in the twentieth century, but to her own novels yet to come. The Clarissa in the quote above is Clarissa Dalloway who will feature in Woolf’s fourth book, Mrs. Dalloway, alongside her husband Richard, mercifully given a more mute role in the later work than he has here. The other male characters in The Voyage Out are prototypes of Jacob Flanders from Jacob's Room, and Neville, Louis and Bernard from The Waves. There is also an artist character in The Voyage Out, a foreshadowing of Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. There are even hints of the exoticism of Orlando to be found here. Woolf had set out to write something different from her contemporaries, and so, for all its formal conventionality, The Voyage Out might be seen as (to borrow Christine Froula’s phrase) ‘a Woolf in sheep’s clothing’, as something other than what it purports to be. It may seem less radically different and experimental than her later novels, but there are still key ways in which it departs from conventional narrative: its emphasis on the everyday, on meaningless conversations, on the difference between what people think and what they say. What motivated Woolf to revise her text? She made revisions in the aftermath of her breakdown, and after her literary career was revived with her second novel, Night and Day, published in 1919.

This is a story about a young English woman, Rachel, on a sea voyage from London, to a South American coastal city of Santa Marina. As I read the story, the title of the story became a metaphor for Rachel's inner journey. Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs. Rachel's mother has passed away many years ago. The sea voyage and the subsequent months in Santa Marina show that Rachel is also on an inner journey, to understand herself better. She seeks advice from Helen, her aunt, and Helen and Rachel become close friends. Selected eTexts of the novels The Voyage Out, Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, and the collection of stories Monday or Tuesday in a variety of digital formats.

In The Voyage Out we find Woolf satirising Edwardian society and foregrounding silences, gaps, and what is not said (which is a typically modernist trope). As Hewet remarks to Rachel in the novel, Compare Huxley’s comments on Burlap’s feelings for his dead wife in Point Counter Point: ‘These agonies which Burlap, by a process of intense concentration on the idea of his loss and grief, had succeeded in churning up within himself were in no way proportionate or even related to his feelings for the living Susan’ (Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (London: Chatto & Windus, 1928) p. 231). Chapter III. In Portugal, Richard and Clarissa Dalloway are taken on board as extra passengers. At dinner there is conversation on the arts and politics, after which Clarissa writes a satirical letter criticising the other guests. Her husband joins her, and they both feel superior but sympathetic towards their fellow travellers. Virginia Woolf is now recognized as a major twentieth-century author, a great novelist and essayist and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and a modernist. Born in 1882, she was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen, and suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her step-sister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. Her father died in 1904 and two years later her favourite brother Thoby died suddenly of typhoid. When Clarissa Dalloway exclaims: "How much rather one would be a murderer than a bore!" that resonates with our time's craving for interesting crime rather than virtuous mediocrity. But it also shows the strange carelessness which is a prelude to the highly unnecessary Great War. The novel was begun in 1907, at the time when Picasso experimented with the break-up of the traditional correspondence between colour and form and object, most notably evident in "The Demoiselles D'Avignon". This development towards a new interpretation of the world is very much visible in "The Voyage Out" as well, where many facets, colours and ideas are brought together in a painting of a society in a state of change.Euphrosyne (yew-FROH-seen). Ship owned by Willoughby Vinrace on which Rachel and others travel to Santa Marina. On this ship Rachel is expected to function as hostess for her father, signaling the beginning of her feminine education. The characters on the Euphrosyne form a microcosm of English society, which includes the servants, the middle class (Ambroses), the political elite (the Dalloways), and an eccentric scholar (Pepper). These types are also found among the English tourists at the Santa Marina hotel and together they represent an idealization of England as culturally sophisticated. On the ship the travelers discuss cultural and political activities in London. For instance, the sea reminds them of the British Royal Navy, a symbol of patriotism in post-colonial Great Britain. The voyage is also reminiscent of mythologized western sea voyages embarking on discoveries not only of new territories but also of human strengths and foibles; Rachel becomes the focus of this voyage. In this sense, the Euphrosyne sets the stage for Rachel’s self-discovery and self-realization. Euphrosyne, a word which means joy, was one of the three Graces, Greek goddesses who presided over social events, and is thus significant to Rachel’s socialization. The novel begins in London, then moves via a very convincing storm at sea to Portugal, where the Dalloways join the ship. This part of the narrative is quite credible, and is possibly based on a journey at sea Virginia Woolf made to Portugal with her younger brother Adrian in 1905. But after the Dalloways are dropped off (almost parenthetically) in North Africa the location switches with virtually no transition to the fictitious Santa Marina.