The Years
Encyclopedia
The Years is a 1937
novel by Virginia Woolf
, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s.
Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic
in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' lives. Except for the first, each section takes place on a single day of its titular year, and each year is defined by a particular moment in the cycle of seasons. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes as a transition within sections, Woolf describes the changing weather all over Britain
, taking in both London
and countryside as if in a bird's-eye-view before focusing in on her characters. Although these descriptions move across the whole of England
in a paragraph, Woolf only rarely and briefly broadens her view to the world outside Britain.
, Woolf thought of making this speech the basis of a second book of essays on women, this time taking a broader view of their economic and social life, rather than focusing on women as artists as the first book had.
However, soon after beginning the planned essays she had the idea of adding a series of fictional illustrations to them. She conceived the original form of a "novel-essay" in which each essay would be followed by a novelistic passage--presented as extracts from an imaginary longer novel--which would exemplify the ideas explored in the essay. She called the book The Pargiters.
Between October and December of 1932, Woolf wrote six essays and their accompanying fictional "extracts" for The Pargiters. But by February of 1933 Woolf had jettisoned the theoretical framework of her "novel-essay" and began to rework the book as pure fiction. Some of the conceptual material expressed in The Pargiters eventually made its way into Woolf's non-fiction essay-letter, Three Guineas
(1938
). In 1977, a transcription of the original draft of six essays and extracts--together with the speech that first inspired them--was published under the title The Pargiters, edited by Mitchell Leaska.
Woolf's manuscripts of the novel, including the draft from which The Pargiters was prepared, are in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of the New York Public Library
.
Colonel Abel Pargiter visits his mistress Mira in a dingy suburb, then returns home to his children and his invalid wife Rose. His eldest daughter Eleanor is a do-gooder in her early twenties, and Milly and Delia are in their teens. Morris, the eldest brother, is already a practising barrister
. Delia feels trapped by her mother's illness and looks forward to her death. Ten-year-old Rose quarrels with twelve-year-old Martin and sneaks off by herself to a nearby toyshop; on the way back she is frightened by a man exposing himself. As the family prepares for bed, Mrs. Pargiter seems at last to have died, but she recovers.
In Oxford it is a rainy night and undergraduate Edward, the last Pargiter sibling, reads Antigone
and thinks of his cousin Kitty Malone, with whom he is in love. He is distracted by two friends, the athletic Gibbs and the bookish Ashley.
Daughter of a Head of House at Oxford
, cousin Kitty endures her mother's academic dinner-parties, studies half-heartedly with an impoverished female scholar named Lucy Craddock, and considers various marriage prospects, dismissing Edward. She is sitting with her mother when the news is brought that Mrs. Pargiter is dead.
At Mrs. Pargiter's funeral, Delia distracts herself with romantic fantasies of Charles Stewart Parnell
and struggles to feel any real emotional response to her mother's death.
Kitty has married the wealthy Lord Lasswade as her mother predicted, and Milly has married Edward's friend Gibbs; they are at a hunting party at the Lasswade estate. Back in London
, Eleanor, now in her thirties, runs her father's household and does charity work to provide improved housing for the poor. Travelling London on a horse-drawn omnibus
she visits her charity cases, reads a letter from Martin (twenty-three and having adventures in India
), and visits court to watch Morris argue a case. Morris is married to Celia. Back in the street, Eleanor reads the news of Parnell's death and tries to visit Delia, living alone and still Parnell's avid supporter. But Delia is not home.
Colonel Pargiter visits the family of his younger brother, Sir Digby Pargiter. Digby is married to the flamboyant Eugénie and has two little daughters, Maggie and Sara (called Sally).
Digby and Eugénie bring Maggie home from a dance where she spoke with Martin, who has returned from India
. At home, Sara lies in bed reading Edward's translation of Antigone
and listening to another dance down the street. Sara and Maggie are now in their mid-twenties. Maggie arrives home, and the girls tease their mother about her romantic past.
Martin, now forty, visits the house of Digby and Eugénie, which has already been sold after their sudden death. He goes to see Eleanor, now in her fifties. Rose, pushing forty and an unmarried eccentric, also drops in.
Rose, forty, visits her cousins Maggie and Sara (or Sally), who are living together in a cheap apartment. Rose takes Sara to one of Eleanor's philanthropic meetings. Martin also comes, and so does their glamorous cousin Kitty Lasswade, now nearing fifty. After the meeting Kitty visits the opera
. That evening at dinner, Maggie and Sara hear the cry go up that King Edward VII is dead.
The chapter begins with a brief glimpse of the south of France
, where Maggie has married a Frenchman named Réné (or Renny) and is already expecting a baby. In England, Colonel Pargiter has died, and the family's old house is shut up for sale. Eleanor visits her brother Morris and Celia, who have a teenaged son and daughter named North and Peggy (another son, Charles, is mentioned in a later section). Also visiting is Sir William Whatney, one of spinster Eleanor's few youthful flirtations. There is gossip that Rose has been arrested for throwing a brick (this was a time of Suffragette
protests).
The Pargiter's family home is being sold, and Eleanor says goodbye to the housekeeper, Crosby, who must now take a room in a boarding-house after forty years in the Pargiters' basement. From her new lodgings Crosby takes the train across London to collect the laundry of Martin, now forty-five and still a bachelor.
The time is one month before the outbreak of World War I
, although no hint is given of this.
Wandering past St. Paul's Cathedral, Martin runs into his cousin Sara (or Sally), now in her early thirties. They have lunch together at a chop shop, then walk through Hyde Park
and meet Maggie with her baby. Martin mentions that his sister Rose is in prison. Martin continues on alone to a party being given by Lady Lasswade (cousin Kitty). At the party he meets teenage Ann Hillier and professor Tony Ashton, who attended Mrs. Malone's 1880 dinner party as an undergraduate. The party over, Kitty changes for a night train ride to her husband's country estate, then is driven by motorcar to his castle. As day breaks she walks through the grounds.
During the war, Eleanor visits Maggie and Renny, who have fled France for London. She meets their openly gay
friend Nicholas, a Polish-American. Sara arrives late, angry over a quarrel with North, who is about to leave for the front lines and whose military service
Sara views with contempt. There is a bombing raid, and the party takes its supper to a basement room for safety.
The briefest of the sections at barely more than three pages long, 1918 shows us Crosby, now very old and with pain in her legs. She hobbles home from work with her new employers, whom she considers "dirty foreigners" not "gentlefolk" like the Pargiters. Suddenly, guns and sirens go off, but it is not the war - it is the news that the war has ended.
Morris's son North, in his thirties, has returned from Africa
, where he ran an isolated ranch in the years after the war. He visits Sara, in her fifties and living alone in a cheap boarding-house, and they recall the friendship they carried on for years by mail.
North's sister Peggy, a doctor in her late thirties, visits Eleanor, who is over seventy. Eleanor is an avid traveler, excited and curious about the modern age, but the bitter, misanthropic Peggy prefers romanticized stories of her aunt's Victorian
past. The two pass the memorial to Edith Cavell
in Trafalgar Square
, and Peggy's brother Charles, who died in the war, is mentioned for the first and only time.
Delia, now in her sixties, married an Irishman long ago and moved away, but she is visiting London and gives a party for her family. The whole surviving cast gathers for the reunion.
1937 in literature
The year 1937 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 9 - The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.*Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets Klaus Mann.-New books:*Eric Ambler - Uncommon Danger...
novel by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s.
Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' lives. Except for the first, each section takes place on a single day of its titular year, and each year is defined by a particular moment in the cycle of seasons. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes as a transition within sections, Woolf describes the changing weather all over Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, taking in both London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and countryside as if in a bird's-eye-view before focusing in on her characters. Although these descriptions move across the whole of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in a paragraph, Woolf only rarely and briefly broadens her view to the world outside Britain.
Development
The novel had its inception in a 1931 lecture Woolf made before the National Society for Women's Service. Having recently published A Room of One's OwnA Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928...
, Woolf thought of making this speech the basis of a second book of essays on women, this time taking a broader view of their economic and social life, rather than focusing on women as artists as the first book had.
However, soon after beginning the planned essays she had the idea of adding a series of fictional illustrations to them. She conceived the original form of a "novel-essay" in which each essay would be followed by a novelistic passage--presented as extracts from an imaginary longer novel--which would exemplify the ideas explored in the essay. She called the book The Pargiters.
Between October and December of 1932, Woolf wrote six essays and their accompanying fictional "extracts" for The Pargiters. But by February of 1933 Woolf had jettisoned the theoretical framework of her "novel-essay" and began to rework the book as pure fiction. Some of the conceptual material expressed in The Pargiters eventually made its way into Woolf's non-fiction essay-letter, Three Guineas
Three Guineas
Three Guineas is a book-length essay by Virginia Woolf, published in June 1938.-Background:Although Three Guineas is a work of non-fiction, it was initially conceived as a "novel-essay" which would tie up the loose ends left in her earlier work, A Room of One's Own...
(1938
1938 in literature
The year 1938 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The trilogy, U.S.A. by John Dos Passos, is published containing his three novels The 42nd Parallel , 1919 , and The Big Money ....
). In 1977, a transcription of the original draft of six essays and extracts--together with the speech that first inspired them--was published under the title The Pargiters, edited by Mitchell Leaska.
Woolf's manuscripts of the novel, including the draft from which The Pargiters was prepared, are in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
.
1880
"It was an uncertain Spring."Colonel Abel Pargiter visits his mistress Mira in a dingy suburb, then returns home to his children and his invalid wife Rose. His eldest daughter Eleanor is a do-gooder in her early twenties, and Milly and Delia are in their teens. Morris, the eldest brother, is already a practising barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
. Delia feels trapped by her mother's illness and looks forward to her death. Ten-year-old Rose quarrels with twelve-year-old Martin and sneaks off by herself to a nearby toyshop; on the way back she is frightened by a man exposing himself. As the family prepares for bed, Mrs. Pargiter seems at last to have died, but she recovers.
In Oxford it is a rainy night and undergraduate Edward, the last Pargiter sibling, reads Antigone
Antigone (Sophocles)
Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
and thinks of his cousin Kitty Malone, with whom he is in love. He is distracted by two friends, the athletic Gibbs and the bookish Ashley.
Daughter of a Head of House at Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, cousin Kitty endures her mother's academic dinner-parties, studies half-heartedly with an impoverished female scholar named Lucy Craddock, and considers various marriage prospects, dismissing Edward. She is sitting with her mother when the news is brought that Mrs. Pargiter is dead.
At Mrs. Pargiter's funeral, Delia distracts herself with romantic fantasies of Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...
and struggles to feel any real emotional response to her mother's death.
1891
"An Autumn wind blew over England."Kitty has married the wealthy Lord Lasswade as her mother predicted, and Milly has married Edward's friend Gibbs; they are at a hunting party at the Lasswade estate. Back in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Eleanor, now in her thirties, runs her father's household and does charity work to provide improved housing for the poor. Travelling London on a horse-drawn omnibus
Bus
A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...
she visits her charity cases, reads a letter from Martin (twenty-three and having adventures in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
), and visits court to watch Morris argue a case. Morris is married to Celia. Back in the street, Eleanor reads the news of Parnell's death and tries to visit Delia, living alone and still Parnell's avid supporter. But Delia is not home.
Colonel Pargiter visits the family of his younger brother, Sir Digby Pargiter. Digby is married to the flamboyant Eugénie and has two little daughters, Maggie and Sara (called Sally).
1907
"It was midsummer; and the nights were hot."Digby and Eugénie bring Maggie home from a dance where she spoke with Martin, who has returned from India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. At home, Sara lies in bed reading Edward's translation of Antigone
Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Oedipus' mother. The name may be taken to mean "unbending", coming from "anti-" and "-gon / -gony" , but has also been suggested to mean "opposed to motherhood", "in place of a mother", or "anti-generative", based from the root...
and listening to another dance down the street. Sara and Maggie are now in their mid-twenties. Maggie arrives home, and the girls tease their mother about her romantic past.
1908
"It was March and the wind was blowing."Martin, now forty, visits the house of Digby and Eugénie, which has already been sold after their sudden death. He goes to see Eleanor, now in her fifties. Rose, pushing forty and an unmarried eccentric, also drops in.
1910
"...an English spring day, bright enough, but a purple cloud behind the hill might mean rain."Rose, forty, visits her cousins Maggie and Sara (or Sally), who are living together in a cheap apartment. Rose takes Sara to one of Eleanor's philanthropic meetings. Martin also comes, and so does their glamorous cousin Kitty Lasswade, now nearing fifty. After the meeting Kitty visits the opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
. That evening at dinner, Maggie and Sara hear the cry go up that King Edward VII is dead.
1911
"The sun was rising. Very slowly it came up over the horizon shaking out light."The chapter begins with a brief glimpse of the south of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where Maggie has married a Frenchman named Réné (or Renny) and is already expecting a baby. In England, Colonel Pargiter has died, and the family's old house is shut up for sale. Eleanor visits her brother Morris and Celia, who have a teenaged son and daughter named North and Peggy (another son, Charles, is mentioned in a later section). Also visiting is Sir William Whatney, one of spinster Eleanor's few youthful flirtations. There is gossip that Rose has been arrested for throwing a brick (this was a time of Suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
protests).
1913
"It was January. Snow was falling. Snow had fallen all day."The Pargiter's family home is being sold, and Eleanor says goodbye to the housekeeper, Crosby, who must now take a room in a boarding-house after forty years in the Pargiters' basement. From her new lodgings Crosby takes the train across London to collect the laundry of Martin, now forty-five and still a bachelor.
1914
"It was a brilliant spring day; the day was radiant."The time is one month before the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, although no hint is given of this.
Wandering past St. Paul's Cathedral, Martin runs into his cousin Sara (or Sally), now in her early thirties. They have lunch together at a chop shop, then walk through Hyde Park
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
and meet Maggie with her baby. Martin mentions that his sister Rose is in prison. Martin continues on alone to a party being given by Lady Lasswade (cousin Kitty). At the party he meets teenage Ann Hillier and professor Tony Ashton, who attended Mrs. Malone's 1880 dinner party as an undergraduate. The party over, Kitty changes for a night train ride to her husband's country estate, then is driven by motorcar to his castle. As day breaks she walks through the grounds.
1917
"A very cold winter's night, so silent that the air seemed frozen"During the war, Eleanor visits Maggie and Renny, who have fled France for London. She meets their openly gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
friend Nicholas, a Polish-American. Sara arrives late, angry over a quarrel with North, who is about to leave for the front lines and whose military service
Military service
Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...
Sara views with contempt. There is a bombing raid, and the party takes its supper to a basement room for safety.
1918
"A veil of mist covered the November sky;"The briefest of the sections at barely more than three pages long, 1918 shows us Crosby, now very old and with pain in her legs. She hobbles home from work with her new employers, whom she considers "dirty foreigners" not "gentlefolk" like the Pargiters. Suddenly, guns and sirens go off, but it is not the war - it is the news that the war has ended.
Present Day
"It was a summer evening; the sun was setting;"Morris's son North, in his thirties, has returned from Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, where he ran an isolated ranch in the years after the war. He visits Sara, in her fifties and living alone in a cheap boarding-house, and they recall the friendship they carried on for years by mail.
North's sister Peggy, a doctor in her late thirties, visits Eleanor, who is over seventy. Eleanor is an avid traveler, excited and curious about the modern age, but the bitter, misanthropic Peggy prefers romanticized stories of her aunt's Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
past. The two pass the memorial to Edith Cavell
Edith Cavell
Edith Louisa Cavell was a British nurse and spy. She is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from all sides without distinction and in helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I, for which she was arrested...
in Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...
, and Peggy's brother Charles, who died in the war, is mentioned for the first and only time.
Delia, now in her sixties, married an Irishman long ago and moved away, but she is visiting London and gives a party for her family. The whole surviving cast gathers for the reunion.
1880 in The Pargiters
The 1932 draft published as The Pargiters is in many respects the same as the finished "1880" section of The Years. However, Woolf made a number of significant alterations and provided a family tree with specific birth dates for the characters, many of whose ages are only implied in the finished novel. However, this diagram lists Colonel Pargiter as dying in 1893, while in the novel he survives till 1910, so the birth dates may not be definitive. Editor Mitchell Leaska notes that, when figuring out the ages of the characters by sums jotted in the margins of the draft, Woolf makes a number of errors in arithmetic - a problem that also afflicts Eleanor in the novel.- First Essay A version of the speech that inspired the novel, the opening essay is addressed to an imaginary live audience. It describes a multi-volume novel-in-progress, called The Pargiters, which purports to trace the history of the family from the year 1800 to 2032. The family is described as "English life at its most normal, most typical, and most representative."
- First Chapter Begins with the heading "Chapter Fifty-Six," going along with the conceit that it is an extract from an existing longer novel. Similar to the scene that introduces the Pargiter children in the novel.
- Second Essay Discusses the reasons for the Pargiter daughters' idleness and lack of education, including the social strictures that stifle the girls' sexual impulses and cause the musically talented Delia to neglect her violin.
- Second Chapter Similar to the passages in the novel describing Rose's trip to the toy store, but dwells in more detail on the shock of the attack and Rose's fear and guilt later that night.
- Third Essay Refers to the attempted sexual assault on Rose as "one of the many kinds of love" and notes that it "raged everywhere outside the drawing room" but was never mentioned in the work of Victorian novelists. Discusses the way the assault strains Rose's relationship with her brother Martin (in this draft called "Bobby") and his greater freedom in sexual matters. Briefly introduces a suffragette character, Nora Graham.
- Third Chapter Similar to Edward's Oxford scene in the finished novel. In a deleted passage, Edward imagines Antigone and Kitty fused into a single glamorous figure and struggles with the urge to masturbate, writing a poem in Greek to calm down. Edward's friend Ashley is called "Jasper Jevons" in this version.
- Fourth Essay Describes the centuries-long tradition of all-male education at Oxford and its influence on Edward's sexual life, contrasted with the limited education available to women. Here Ashley/Jevons is called "Tony Ashton," and once in the following chapter Tony Ashton is called "Tony Ashley," suggesting that these various names originally referred to a single character in Woolf's mind. It is specified that Edward and Kitty's mothers are cousins, a relationship left unstated in the novel.
- Fourth Chapter Similar to Kitty's introductory scenes in the novel. There is more detail on her dislike for (and sympathy with) Tony Ashton's effeminacy. It's revealed that Kitty's mother comes of Yorkshire farming stock, and Kitty recalls with pleasure being kissed under a haystack by a farmer's son.
- Fifth Essay More detail on Kitty's awkward closeness with her teacher Lucy Craddock, Miss Craddock's own frustrated academic hopes, and the reaction of male academics to intellectual women. Miss Craddock has another less pretty and more studious pupil named Nelly Hughes, of the family who in the novel are called "the Robsons."
- Fifth Chapter Similar to the scene of Kitty's visit to the Robsons (here changed from "the Hughes" to "the Brooks"), who are determined that Nelly will succeed academically. Kitty enjoys sharing Yorkshire roots with the mother, and more detail is given on her attraction to the son of the family. The chapter ends with Kitty determined to leave Oxford and become a farmer's wife.
- Sixth Essay Discusses the genteel feminine ideal to which Kitty and her mother must aspire, and contrasts it with the sincere respect for women of the working-class Mr. Brook. Ends in praise of Joseph WrightJoseph Wright (linguist)Joseph Wright FBA was an English philologist who rose from humble origins to become Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford University.-Early life:...
, a real-life scholar whose collaboration with his wife Woolf admired.