Woolf readers at one of the exhibit and bookseller tables at the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

Roughly 350 scholars from around the globe have gathered at the University of Sussex for the 34th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. And coming from the United States, this year’s topic could not be more timely: Woolf and Dissidence.

As an American living under the destructive regime now ruling my country, I hoped that I and my compatriots would be greeted with empathy and understanding by those we met at this conference in England.

I was not disappointed. I and others from the U.S. have been embraced more warmly than ever by the students, common readers and scholars from around the world who have arrived in Falmer, the English town on the outskirts of Brighton, where the University of Sussex is located.

The universal question

Time for talk during a conference break.

Whether from Turkey, Korea, Brazil, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Canada or the UK, our fellow humans and Woolfians share our disappointment in the country I call my home.

And they almost universally ask the question we Americans have been asking ourselves since last November: “How did this happen?”

Sadly, we have no definitive answer. All we can offer are conjectures, theories, and speculations.

Dangerous words

Notice how I am writing here. I am choosing my words carefully. I am not saying exactly what I mean. Instead, I am offering hints. Instead, I am writing in a kind of code.

Why? I am afraid. Not so afraid that I will be silent, because, as Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.”

But afraid enough to edit myself, to avoid publishing words on the web that might bring attention from the thought police. After all, I would like to get back into the country of my birth.

Clarissa Dalloway’s dangerous world

Which brings me to one of the best things I heard at the conference so far: Fordham University Professor Anne Fernald’s keynote presentation titled “Dangerous Days: A Century with Clarissa Dalloway.”

In it, she talked about the dangers we face in our current political climate and the dangers Clarissa faced in Woolf’s 1925 novel. Clarissa lost her sister at a young age. She lived through the Great War. She survived the influenza pandemic.

Woolf describes Clarissa’s feelings this way:

She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always has the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. (MD 8)

I now understand that quote. And I recognize — once again — that Woolf’s words always apply.

Anne Fernald gives her keynote address, “Dangerous Days: A Century with Clarissa Dalloway.”