I first read Kat Meads in a literary journal a few years ago, wowed by her essay on Sylvia
Plath’s and Flannery O’Connor’s mothers. When I learned that this piece, along with ones on Virginia Woolf, Mary McCarthy and others, would be in her new essay collection, I ordered my copy and have been rewarded by everything about it, including the striking cover.
“Things Woolfian” is the opening act in These Particular Women. Meads recalls writing a term paper on Woolf’s novels for an honors class in 1973 when the Quentin Bell biography was the only secondary source. It’s the plethora of biographies and essays and analyses that have emerged over the past fifty years—and the turf wars over varying interpretations about Woolf’s life and work, often contrasting with Woolf’s own letters and autobiographical works—that Meads diligently scrutinizes.
Woolf, mental illness, sexuality and more
Regarding Woolf’s mental illness, she notes that not everyone accepted Leonard Woolf’s or Quentin Bell’s accounts, citing Hermione Lee and others who question the chronology and severity of Virginia’s breakdowns. Another hotly contested issue was Leonard’s role—help or hindrance?—with both pro- and anti-Leonard factions waging wars of words over the years.
Virginia Woolf’s sexuality, her relationships with friends and family, her idiosyncrasies, her death and her afterlife are explored through the extensive written record Meads—and we—sift through today.
These Particular Women approaches its other subjects with a similar dissection of the historical record, sourcing biographers, journalists, and contemporaries to speculate about Agatha Christie’s eleven-day disappearance, Kitty Oppenheimer’s struggles in her husband’s shadow, Mary McCarthy’s presentation of self, Jean Harris as dissected by Shana Alexander and Diana Trilling. Each of these women was a rebel, out of step with and often ahead of her times.
More from Kat Meads
Kat Meads has also written works of fiction, poetry, and memoir, and I can’t sign off without a brief synopsis (with Woolf citation) of her wildly entertaining 2018 novel, Miss Jane: The Lost Years. Miss Jane, a student, endures emotional abuse at the hands of the despicable Prof P, under the watchful eyes of the Greek chorus that narrates her tale.
When Prof P storms out after one of his tirades, they wish him “Good riddance! One less misery in the house!” But they become concerned about how she’ll respond to being alone. They’re relieved that there’s no shotgun in the house, that the ocean is four hours east, and:
We’re relieved Miss Jane doesn’t daily stroll alongside an Ouse-ian river with fast-flowing, tempting tides. We’re relieved Miss Jane stopped reading Virginia…. We’re relieved Miss Jane has collected no pocket stones.
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the story “The Brain That Wouldn’t Virginia Woolf,” a mash-up of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, told in reverse chronological order.
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