VIRGINIA WOOLF: PRIMARY SOURCES

VIRGINIA WOOLF (REVIEW DATE 25 JANUARY 1905)

SOURCE: Woolf, Virginia. Review of The Feminine Note in Fiction, by W. L. Courtney. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 1904-1912, Volume I, edited by Andrew McNeillie, pp. 15-17. London: Hogarth Press, 1986.

In the following review, which originally appeared in the newspaper Guardian on January 25, 1905, Woolf rebuts the principal points of Courtney's argument concerning women's writing, concluding that the book raises more questions than it answers.

Mr Courtney is certain that there is such a thing as the feminine note in fiction; he desires, moreover, to define its nature in the book before us, though at the start he admits that the feminine and masculine points of view are so different that it is difficult for one to understand the other. At any rate, he has made a laborious attempt; it is, perhaps, partly for the reason just stated that he ends where he begins¹. He gives us eight very patient and careful studies in the works of living women writers, in which he outlines the plots of their most successful books in detail. But we would have spared him the trouble willingly in exchange for some definite verdict; we can all read Mrs Humphry Ward, for instance, and remember her story, but we want a critic to separate her virtues and her failings, to assign her right place in literature and to decide which of her characteristics are essentially feminine and why, and what is their significance. Mr Courtney implies by his title that he will, at any rate, accomplish this last, and it is with disappointment, though not with surprise, that we discover that he has done nothing of the kind. Is it not too soon after all to criticise the 'feminine note' in anything? And will not the adequate critic of women be a woman?

Mr Courtney, we think, feels something of this difficulty; his introduction, in which we expected to find some kind of summing-up, contains only some very tentative criticisms and conclusions. Women, we gather, are seldom artists, because they have a passion for detail which conflicts with the proper artistic proportion of their work. We would cite Sappho and Jane Austen as examples of two great women who combine exquisite detail with a supreme sense of artistic proportion. Women, again, excel in 'close analytic miniature work;'² they are more happy when they reproduce than when they create; their genius is for psychological analysis—all of which we note with interest, though we reserve our judgment for the next hundred years or bequeath the duty to our successor. Yet it is worth noting, as proof of the difficulty of the task which Mr Courtney has set himself, that he finds two at least of his eight women writers 'artists'³—that two others possess a strength which in this age one has to call masculine, and, in fact, that no pair of them come under any one heading, though, of course, in the same way as men, they can be divided roughly into schools. At any rate, it seems to be clear according to Mr Courtney that more and more novels are written by women for women, which is the cause, he declares, that the novel as a work of art is disappearing. The first part of his statement may well be true; it means that women having found their voices have something to say which is naturally of supreme interest and meaning to women, but the value of which we cannot yet determine. The assertion that the woman novelist is extinguishing the novel as a work of art seems to us, however, more doubtful. It is, at any rate, possible that the widening of her intelligence by means of education and study of the Greek and Latin classics may give her that sterner view of literature which will make an artist of her, so that, having blurted out her message somewhat formlessly, she will in due time fashion it into permanent artistic shape. Mr Courtney has given us material for many questions such as these, but his book has done nothing to prevent them from still remaining questions.

Notes

1. A review in the Guardian, 25 January 1905, of The Feminine Note in Fiction (Chapman & Hall, 1904) by W. L. (William Leonard) Courtney (1850-1928), philosopher, journalist, and sometime fellow of New College, Oxford. See Editorial Note, p. xxii.
2. Courtney, Intro., p. xxxv.
3. The two writers Courtney describes as artists are Mrs Humphry Ward (Mary Augusta Ward, 1851-1920): p. 32, where he talks of her work in terms of the visual arts, and p. 40, where he refers to the 'artistic excellence' of Lady Rose's Daughter (1903); and John Oliver Hobbes (Mrs Pearl Craigie, 1867-1906): p. 51, and p. 53, where she is described as 'an artist assured of her powers'. The other writers he discusses are: Lucas Malet, Gertrude Atherton, Margaret Louisa Woods, Mrs E. L. Voynich, Elizabeth Robins (see 'A Dark Lantern' below), and Mary E. Wilkins (see 'The Debtor' below).

VIRGINIA WOOLF (LETTER DATE 16 OCTOBER 1920)

SOURCE: Woolf, Virginia. "Letter to the Editor, The New Statesman." In Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf, edited by Joanne Trautmann Banks, pp. 124-27. London: Hogarth Press, 1989.

In the following letter, which originally appeared in the magazine New Statesman on October 16, 1920, Woolf responds to comments made by Desmond MacCarthy—"Affable Hawk"—regarding the intellectual inferiority of women by offering a number of historical precedents that contributed to such a conclusion.

To The Editor, The New Statesman

[Hogarth House, Richmond]

[16 October 1920]¹

Sir,

To begin with Sappho. We do not, as in the hypothetical case of Burns suggested by 'Affable Hawk', judge her merely by her fragments.² We supplement our judgement by the opinions of those to whom her works were known in their entirety. It is true that she was born 2,500 years ago. According to 'Affable Hawk' the fact that no poetess of her genius has appeared from 600 B.C. to the eighteenth century proves that during that time there were no poetesses of potential genius. It follows that the absence of poetesses of moderate merit during that period proves that there were no women writers of potential mediocrity. There was no Sappho; but also, until the seventeenth or eighteenth century, there was no Marie Corelli and no Mrs Barclay.³

To account for the complete lack not only of good women writers but also of bad women writers I can conceive no reason unless it be that there was some external restraint upon their powers. For 'Affable Hawk' admits that there have always been women of second or third rate ability. Why, unless they were forcibly prohibited, did they not express these gifts in writing, music, or painting? The case of Sappho, though so remote, throws, I think, a little light upon the problem. I quote J. A. Symonds:

Several circumstances contributed to aid the development of lyric poetry in Lesbos. The customs of the Aeolians permitted more social and domestic freedom than was common in Greece. Aeolian women were not confined to the harem like Ionians, or subjected to the rigorous discipline of the Spartans. While mixing freely with male society, they were highly educated and accustomed to express their sentiments to an extent unknown elsewhere in history—until, indeed, the present time.⁴

And now to skip from Sappho to Ethel Smyth.

'There was nothing else [but intellectual inferiority] to prevent down the ages, so far as I can see, women who always played, sang and studied music, producing as many musicians from among their number as men have done,' says 'Affable Hawk'. Was there nothing to prevent Ethel Smyth from going to Munich [Leipzig, actually]? Was there no opposition from her father? Did she find that the playing, singing and study of music which well-to-do families provided for their daughters were such as to fit them to become musicians? Yet Ethel Smyth was born in the nineteenth century. There are no great women painters, says 'Affable Hawk', though painting is now within their reach. It is within their reach—if that is to say there is sufficient money after the sons have been educated to permit of paints and studios for the daughters and no family reason requiring their presence at home. Otherwise they must make a dash for it and disregard a species of torture more exquisitely painful, I believe, than any that man can imagine. And this is in the twentieth century. But, 'Affable Hawk' argues, a great creative mind would triumph over obstacles such as these. Can he point to a single one of the great geniuses of history who has sprung from a people stinted of education and held in subjection, as for example the Irish or the Jews? It seems to me indisputable that the conditions which make it possible for a Shakespeare to exist are that he shall have had predecessors in his art, shall make one of a group where art is freely discussed and practised, and shall himself have the utmost of freedom of action and experience. Perhaps in Lesbos, but never since, have these conditions been the lot of women. 'Affable Hawk' then names several men who have triumphed over poverty and ignorance. His first example is Isaac Newton. Newton was the son of a farmer; he was sent to a grammar school; he objected to working on the farm; an uncle, a clergyman, advised that he should be exempted and prepared for college; and at the age of nineteen he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. (See D.N.B.)⁵ Newton, that is to say, had to encounter about the same amount of opposition that the daughter of a country solicitor encounters who wishes to go to Newnham in the year 1920. But his discouragement is not increased by the works of Mr Bennett, Mr Orlo Williams and 'Affable Hawk'.

Putting that aside, my point is that you will not get a big Newton until you have produced a considerable number of lesser Newtons. 'Affable Hawk' will, I hope, not accuse me of cowardice if I do not take up your space with an enquiry into the careers of Laplace, Faraday, and Herschell, no compare the lives and achievements of Aquinas and St Theresa, nor decide whether it was Mill or his friends who was mistaken about Mrs Taylor.⁶ The fact, as I think we shall agree, is that women from the earliest times to the present day have brought forth the entire population of the universe. This occupation has taken much time and strength. It has also brought them into subjection to men, and incidentally—if that were to the point—bred in them some of the most lovable and admirable qualities of the race. My difference with 'Affable Hawk' is not that he denies the present intellectual equality of men and women. It is that he, with Mr Bennett, asserts that the mind of woman is not sensibly affected by education and liberty; that it is incapable of the highest achievements; and that it must remain for ever in the condition in which it now is. I must repeat that the fact that women have improved (which 'Affable Hawk' now seems to admit), shows that they may still improve; for I cannot see why a limit should be set to their improvement in the nineteenth century rather than in the one hundred and nineteenth. But it is not education only that is needed. It is that women should have liberty of experience; that they should differ from men without fear and express their difference openly (for I do not agree with 'Affable Hawk' that men and women are alike); that all activity of the mind should be so encouraged that there will always be in existence a nucleus of women who think, invent, imagine, and create as freely as men do, and with as little fear of ridicule and condescension. These conditions, in my view of great importance, are impeded by such statements as those of 'Affable Hawk' and Mr Bennett, for a man has still much greater facilities that a woman for making his views known and respected. Certainly I cannot doubt that if such opinions prevail in the future we shall remain in a condition of half-civilised barbarism. At least that is how I define an eternity of dominion on the one hand and of servility on the other. For the degradation of being a slave is only equalled by the degradation of being a master.

Yours, etc., Virginia Woolf

Notes

1. 'Affable Hawk' (Desmond MacCarthy) had not been convinced by Virginia's arguments and had written a rebuttal, to which Virginia replied the following week.
2. MacCarthy had suggested that Robert Burns too might be considered a great poet if, like Sappho, his work had survived only in fragments.
3. The popular novelists Marie Corelli (Mary Mackay, 1855-1924) and Florence Barclay (1862-1921).
4. From John Addington Symonds' Studies of the Greek Poets (1873).
5. The Dictionary of National Biography, whose first editor, 1882-91, was Leslie Stephen.
6. Mrs Taylor, whom MacCarthy used to support his argument along with the others named in this sentence, married John Stuart Mill in 1851. The philosopher thought her his superior in every way, but his friends disagreed with him.