Writing for publication requires a certain amount of talent, along with persistence, drive and ego. Thus, many writers are complicated and competitive people. Virginia Woolf was no exception.
That’s why the current discussion on the VW Listserv, which involves what is often described as “the rivalry” between Woolf and James Joyce, is worth reporting. It shows her as the complex, multi-dimensional person she was.
I believe it is important, however, to place Woolf’s musings about Joyce within the context of women’s history. For it is that context that helps frame her response to him and his art.
As postings to the list have mentioned, Woolf’s comments about Joyce were not consistent. Sometimes she praised him; sometimes she criticized him. Both her praise and her criticism could be extreme, colored by intense feeling.
Federico Sabatini, who describes himself as a young Joyce scholar who has devoted five years to studying and writing about the Irish author, quotes these words of self-deprecating praise from Woolf in her letters: “what she was attempting was probably being better done by mr joyce.”
Robert Ireland focuses on Woolf’s harsh criticism of Joyce and turns her class consciousness — for which she is often criticized — against her. From a Diary entry of 16 August 1922, he quotes Woolf as describing Ulysses as an “illiterate, underbred book … of a self taught working man.”
Another poster to the list named Simon contributed a raft of quotes, including this one from Woolf’s 6 September 1922 Diary entry, which mixes the weakest praise with the strongest disgust: “I finished Ulysses, & think it a misfire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense.”
That same month, in two other diary entries, Woolf admits that by not reading the work carefully, she had probably “scamped the virtue of it,” and that she had her “back up on purpose” against Joyce’s experimental novel.
I think we need to be aware of more than Woolf’s class consciousness and competitive spirit about her writing. We also need to remember that in 1922, she was an anomaly. She was a woman writing in a man’s world.
Consider the following:
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In 1922, British men still ruled England, despite the fact that nearly three-quarters of a million of them were slaughtered on the World War I battlefront while women proved their mettle on the home front.
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In 1922, women in England had only been able to vote for four years. But even then, not all adult women had that right. Younger women — age 21 to 30 — were not given the franchise until 1928.
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In 1922, it had only been two years since a woman had been admitted to Oxford University as the first full degree candidate.
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And in 1922, the equal pay for women clause of the Treaty of Versailles had been universally ignored for three years.
No wonder, then, that Woolf — always painfully aware of the power of the patriarchy — refused to fall into line with male critics such as T.S. Eliot, who offered effusive praise of Joyce’s new novel as being “extremely brilliant.”
Instead, she stood firm in her own views. As she wrote in her diary regarding a conversation with Eliot about Joyce’s novel, “I kept myself from being submerged, though feeling the waters rise once or twice…had I been meek, I suppose I should have gone under — felt him & his views dominant & subversive.”
As Woolf scholar Mark Hussey put it, “In 1922 Ulysses was certainly a song heard loud and clear, with the potential of drowning out others” (Virginia Woolf A-Z 134).
Woolf, who shared the year of her birth and the year of her death with Joyce, refused to be submerged.
For more on Joyce and Woolf, read Bonnie Kime Scott, specifically the following works:
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New Alliances in Joyce Studies: “Whan it’s Aped to Foul a Delfian,”
Editor Newark: University of Deleware Press, 1988. The 1985 Joyce Symposium proceedings, with critical introduction and selections on Recent Theory, Forms in Fiction, Analogies from Art, Feminist Revisions, Joyce and Other Women Writers, Influences and Resonances, and Textual Workshops. -
James Joyce: Harvester Feminist Readings Series. London: Harvester Press, 1987.
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“A Joyce of One’s Own.” Rereading Modernism: New Directions in Feminist Criticism. Ed. Lisa Rado. New York: Garland P, 1994. 209-230.
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While a well written article, I felt this article focuses too much on Woolf’s resisting the patriarchy of the canon as a justification for Woolf’s commentary. Don’t get me wrong, I love Woolf but one must give the whole story. So here are a few more elements for your consideration; first off, the colonial situation must be considered. Woolf was middle-upper class British, and thus was predisposed towards seeing members of the still unwilling colony as lesser. When she describes “Ulysses” as an ”illiterate, underbred book … of a self taught working man” she draws from the larger derogatory intellectual stigma of the Irish. This is precisely what most English would have considered an Irish person trying to match them at their own game.
In addition, “Woolf vs. Joyce” suggests Joyce fought back, but there is little evidence that Joyce even commented on Woolf’s work; unfortunately, it is more of a Woolf attacks Joyce situation if anything.
Just some thoughts for a wider picture, but overall I really enjoyed the article and found it to be a nice, brief, and enjoyable summary of Woolf’s feelings.
Why viewers still make use of to read news papers when in this technological world everything is available on web?
[…] Google and found that her feelings about ULYSSES were much more complex than I had realized. This post on the Blogging Woolf website sketches some of them. I had quoted from Woolf’s Diary: “I […]
Thanks very much, Paula, and of course Anne too. Very kind of you to point these things out. I receive the listserv in digest form and thought that something on “the rivalry” discussion might come in. But it seems no longer to be current. In any case I’ll see if I can find it in the archives. Interesting details in rivalries and sharings. Thanks again, William
Paula, Thanks for your comment. I was wondering whether you know if the VW listserv, which I’ve just joined, has archives that one can search. I’ve just joined and obviously could put the question there, but since you mentioned the list here, I thought it might also be of interest to others. Thanks again, William
The VWoolf Listserv does have an archives. I searched my emails and found instructions regarding it. They were sent by the list owner, Anne Fernald of Fordham University.
Anne’s email:
Here is a full description of how to access the archives:
http://8help.osu.edu/33872.html
Unfortunately, it is not easy to search them: remember, I beg you, that listservs are pretty primitive technologies and so you end up wandering into the dark ages of the internet on this quest.
It’s a 2-step process: send a message to the listserv listproc@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu with this in the body:
index vwoolf
In return, you’ll get a list of files that’ll look something like this:
log9804 (1 part, 1918 bytes) — Fwd: TESTING MODERATION
log9805 (1 part, 4808 bytes) — TEST
log9806 (1 part, 1139 bytes) — TEST
log9807 (1 part, 2023 bytes) — What? How’d you know?
etc…
Unfortunately, the “logs” are determined by computer and it’s hard to discern the exact date from the titles, so you have to do some heavy lifting on your own here. Guess which file or files you want and send a new message to listproc with this in the body
get vwoolf log9807 (that is, get listname logname)
Finally, the archives go back some ways (to 2001 or so–maybe Brenda Silver remembers better than I?) but not ALL the way.
I’m sorry that I don’t have the magic bullet. I’m sorry that this is slow. I do hope that it helps,
Helplessly and humbly yours,
Anne
your cheerful list “owner”
Anne E. Fernald
Assistant Professor and
Director of Writing/Composition at Lincoln Center
English Department
Fordham University
113 W 60th St.
New York NY 10023
fernald@fordham.edu
ONE MORE COMMENT: IT IS DIFFERENT TO HAVE A TALENT IN LINGUISTICS LIKE JOYCE (HE HIMSELF ADMITS IN HIS PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST THAT HIS FUTURE AS A WRITER WAS NOT TO BE FOUND IN BEAUTIFUL WORDS OR DEEP MEANINGS BUT IN THE RYTHMIC GAME WITH WORDS) AND DIFFERENT TO BE A GREAT POET OF THE LANGUAGE, AS VIRGINIA WOOLF DEFINES “THE GREAT POET” IN HER BROADCAST FOR BBC -…..ONLY A GREAT POET KNOWS THAT THE WORD INCARNADINE BELONGS TO THE MULTITUDINOUS SEA…, ONLY A GREAT POET KNOWS, ONLY VIRGINIA WOOLF KNOWS, THE GREATEST POET OF HER CENTURY….
Hello. I very much enjoyed this article. I think it’s a good assessment of the relations between Woolf and Joyce, the two “exact contemporaries” as
Christine Froula has called them. This seems to me the way “Woolf vs. Joyce” also reads the two writers. It also occurred to me to note how Virginia Woolf in “Professions for Women” talks about her own difficultites with the so-called Angel in the House. This also seems to some extent to mark the Woolf/Joyce divide, if there is one. In any case, I mainly wanted to express my enjoyment of this article and say I like this blog. This is my first post here, so perhaps I should say that I’m reading Woolf in the context of working towards a doctoral degree. I like the discussion here and wanted to say that.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and good luck with your doctoral work.
Looking forward to reading more. Great blog article.Really looking forward to read more. Much obliged.
HALLO, I AM A GREAT ADMIRER OF VIRGINIA WOOLF AND A WRITER MYSELF AT MY FIRST STEPS. WOOLF IS THE GREATEST WRITER OF THE TWO. READING ULYSSES IT REMINDED ME OF A HUGE HUGE SHIP, READY TO CONQUER THE OCEANS, WHEN I REALISED IT WAS TIED WITH A TINY ROPE AT THE HARBOUR AND SAILED NOWHERE. BY THAT I MEAN, THAT THE AMBITION WAS VERY BROAD BUT THE FULFILLMENT SO POOR -AND POOR BECAUSE NOT A SINGLE SENTENCE OF IT IS LIFTED FROM THE GROUND. FORM AND THE PLAY WITH THE FORM CAN KEEP THE INTEREST FOR 3, 5, 10 PAGES TILL THE READER REALISES WHAT IS IT ABOUT. TO GO ON READING ONE NEEDS INTERESTING CONTENT, IN ULYSSES CHAPTERS LAY LIKE BULKS,ONE NEXT TO OTHER, HEAVY, WHILE WOOLF WITH NOT SO BROAD A HORIZON, IT IS TRUE, SOARS HIGH, BEAUTY, HARMONY ARE UNBELIEVABLE! JOYCE HAS TALENT BUT MUTE TALENT, CAN NOT CONTROLL HIS PAGES, WOOLF HAS TALENT AND SIMPLY SHES IT LAVISHLY FROM HER LIGHTHOUSE….
HALLO, I AM A GREAT ADMIRER OF VIRGINIA WOOLF AND A WRITER MYSELF AT MY FIRST STEPS. WOOLF IS THE GREATEST WRITER OF THE TWO. READING ULYSSES IT REMINDED ME OF A HUGE HUGE SHIP, READY TO CONQUER THE OCEANS, WHEN I REALISED IT WAS TIED WITH A TINY ROPE AT THE HARBOUR AND SAILED NOWHERE. BY THAT I MEAN, THAT THE AMBITION WAS VERY BROAD BUT THE FULFILLMENT SO POOR -AND POOR BECAUSE NOT A SINGLE SENTENCE OF IT IS LIFTED FROM THE GROUND. FORM AND THE PLAY WITH THE FORM CAN KEEP THE INTEREST FOR 3, 5, 10 PAGES TILL THE READER REALISES WHAT IS IT ABOUT. TO GO ON READING ONE NEEDS INTERESTING CONTENT, IN ULYSSES CHAPTERS LAY LIKE BULKS,ONE NEXT TO OTHER, HEAVY, WHILE WOOLF WITH NOT SO BROAD A HORIZON, IT IS TRUE, SOARS HIGH, BEAUTY, HARMONY ARE UNBELIEVABLE! JOYCE HAS TALENT BUT MUTE TALENT, CAN NOT CONTROLL HIS PAGES, WOOLF HAS TALENT AND SIMPLY SHES IT LAVISHLY FROM HER LIGHTHOUSE….
[…] Naipaul reconciles with Theroux, then denigrates all women writers, Buffalo News (blog) Is Virginia Woolf the “equal” of James Joyce? Is Toni Morrison a better writer than Saul Bellow? Each us us can advance our respective arguments, but these are arguments about status and value, not about reading and writing as creative experiences in … Read Woolf vs. Joyce in the context of women’s history. […]
[…] there’s no question that the work of James Joyce influenced Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf held a generally low opinion of Joyce and thought him a […]
[…] Read more about Joyce and Woolf on Blogging Woolf. […]
[…] Fernham, it turns out Woolf did not love Ulysses. She in fact found it pretentious, brackish, and underbred. But it seems as though much of this criticism didn’t stem from the book itself but rather […]
Anne, thanks for adding more interesting angles to the discussion.
We are so lucky to have Woolf’s diaries to inform our conversations and our research. But we need to remember just what you said — that writing in a diary is often a way to process information and blow off steam. It seems unfair to judge a writer by her diary entries.
No wonder Virginia was so focused on Leonard destroying her papers after her death.
A lovely summary, Paula.
Another factor, of course, is that Woolf was, like Joyce, a novelist. Eliot, as a poet, was not in direct competition with Joyce.
The other thing I would want to weigh is the balance of private and public statements: Woolf often used her diary to blow off steam so it’s almost always more extreme (in any direction) than anything she published. I think it’s up to individual critics to decide if that makes such statements more or less “true,” but it’s a factor to consider…
Two other members of the Bloomberg Circle … the husband of Vita Sackville-West (Harold Nicolson) and John Maynard Keynes were present at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Some great color and insights into their activities are in my exciting new book about the Treaty of Versailles and especially its CONSEQUENCES — book, “A Shattered Peace: Vesailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today” [www.ashatteredpeace.com], available now on Amazon and lots of bookstores !
cheers,
David