The Weight of the Entire World

"'I don’t see circles of chalk between people’s feet.
I sometimes wish I did'" (218).
Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out (1915)


Points for Reflection

"Memoirs of a Novelist" (1909), pp. 69-79

  1. The narrator begins by asking why biographies (“lives”) are written at all, and declares that considering why Miss Linsett wrote the life of Miss Willatt might reveal who Miss Willatt actually was—revealing perhaps more than the two-volume biography itself (69).  By the end of this short story, what have we actually learned about Miss Willatt from Miss Linsett, and what have we learned despite Miss Linsett?
  2. Why did Miss Linsett write her friend’s biography?
  3. Our narrator reports the deaths of three of Miss Willatt’s four family members, deaths discussed in Miss Linsett’s biography of her friend, noting that “they help us somehow to believe in the otherwise visionary youth of our heroine” (71).  Later, however, the narrator complains about Miss Linsett’s preoccupation with death.  Why?
  4. Did Miss Willatt’s brother, Mr. William Willatt, think highly of his sister?
  5. Miss Linsett conjectures that Miss Willatt could never fill the vacancy left following her mother’s death (71), and our narrator follows suit, using her/his own imagination to fill in blanks in Miss Willatt’s life.  S/he assumes, for instance, that Miss W must not have enjoyed her first ball (72).  From this point forward, objective tidbits provided from extant letters and the like provide the occasion for numerous digressions about what might have been going on inside Miss Willatt’s heart and head.  To what degree are the narrator’s musings shaped by her/his own biases?
  6. What information does the narrator fault Miss Linsett for withholding?
  7. Similarly, the narrator criticizes Miss Linsett for doing what to the published letters written around the time of Miss Willatt’s publication of the novel Life’s Crucifix?
  8. In what form of evidence does the narrator find proof positive that the hagiographic-like idealization of Miss Willatt by Miss Linsett is misleading?
  9. For a moment, let’s assume that the narrator speaks for Virginia Stephen herself, and that this story functions like both Lord Byron’s satiric poem “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” (1809) and George Eliot’s (Mary Ann Evan’s) famous essay “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” (1856), in which each author criticizes what s/he finds in other writers in order to clear a space for her/his own literary productions.  What does Virginia Stephen praise in the fiction of George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë, and what does she decry in Miss Willatt’s fiction--features she presumably will not plant in her own, future novels?
  10. Why did Miss Willatt write fiction, according to our narrator (not Miss Linsett)?
  11. Towards the end of her life, Miss Willatt lives in Woburn Square, within the Bloomsbury part of London “like some gorged spider at the centre of her web.”  She draws many folk to her who have since “been rolled into the earth irrecoverably,” with our having no idea what compelled them to visit Miss Willatt, or what they thought of her (78).  Why bother to spend half a paragraph telling us what we cannot know?
  12. According to our narrator, which did Miss Linsett prefer writing about, life or death?  [Death: 72-73.  Also, “one sees that Miss Linsett liked death because it gave her an emotion, and made her feel things for the time as though they meant something” (73 mid).


The Voyage Out (1915), chps. 11-19

  1. do the characters’ stances on religious faith differentiate them, or place them in a shared category?
  2. do the initial thoughts, actions, and words accompanying this chapter’s marriage engagement suggest the marriage itself will be a success?
  3. do Hirst and Hewet adopt a similar posture towards Rachel’s inexperience when interacting with her?
  4. Rachel’s generalizations about the sexes bore him and seem “generally untrue” (156). Does Woolf herself appear to reinscribe or disrupt traditional sexual stereotypes?
  5. when St. John Hirst declares himself made “‘sick’” by “‘the whole thing’” (160), does his remark pertain to the obese woman laughed at by Helen, or the entire dancing party?
  6. what undisclosed topics might Hirst and Helen discuss in whispers, lest others overhear them (162-63)?
  7. why does Helen repeatedly suggest a man is necessary to complete Rachel’s education (163, etc.), and why does she soon, then, claim “‘that it doesn’t matter much in the long run what one does: people always go their own way—nothing will ever influence them’” (164)? With which opinion does Hirst agree?
  8. what impact does Rachel’s playing the piano have on the party attendees?
  9. does Woolf indicate the “key” which appears to have resolved all mysteries for Hirst (169)?
  10. does Mr. Ambrose’s work on the ancient Greek lyric poet Pindar isolate him, or create connections to other people?
  11. which has a more powerful impact on Rachel, her experiences in Nature or what she reads?
  12. why include Miss Allan’s letter from her sister, with details about their brother’s venture on a fruit farm?
  13. Hirst, when bored, entertains himself by constructing “little theories” about those he observes “from their gestures and appearance” (177-78).  Does Rachel evince a similarly active imaginative faculty?
  14. are the means by which Woolf repeatedly introduces the specter of death into the text obvious and obtrusive, or delicate and subtle?
  15. who sees more deeply into the heart of things--into the fundamentals of the human condition--St. John Hirst, Mr. Terence Hewet, Helen Ambrose, or Rachel Vinrace?
  16. what about Rachel does Hewett find so compelling?
  17. do you find Hewett’s eavesdropping on Helen and Rachel (186-87) to be creepy?
  18. does Woolf encourage us to pigeonhole Evelyn after learning of her recent, intimate encounters with Raymond Oliver and Alfred Perrott?
  19. Hewett does not feel he can determine his relative liking for someone till he knows their history, whereas Evelyn Mugatroyd comfortably makes spot judgments, and claims that the qualities she recognizes in a person shape her feelings about that person (191). Hewett argues that we just care for people in and of themselves (192-93).  Does the novel itself appear to privilege one approach over the other?
  20. Hewet once thought Evelyn dishonest (194), determining that she was insecure and determined to “impress upon him an image of herself” as interested in friendship--not love--with men (193).  Does the novel validate his opinion of her?
  21. is the Ambroses’ marriage a strong and stable one?
  22. in another energetic exchange with Hirst, Rachel compares Gibbon’s text to something which “‘goes round, round, round, like a roll of oil-cloth,’” then is “instantly ashamed of her figure of speech, for she could not explain it in words of sober criticism” (201 top-mid).  Where do the cards appear to fall in this novel, on the side of figurative language, or sober criticism?
  23. is Hirst attracted to Helen Ambrose, and is his opinion of her character infectious? Does the reader read Helen the same way Hirst does?
  24. what does St. John Hirst believe that the other great philosophers living today can provide him that even Helen cannot?
  25. which of our characters could be accurately classed as “truth-seekers” willing to leap over propriety in order to touch/seek out reality? Which are instead satisfied with living on the surface of life?
  26. what does St. John Hirst believe that the other great philosophers living today can provide him that even Helen cannot?
  27. is Hewet better classified as a sexist pig, or as a feminist?
  28. Hewet identifies the current political and governmental system as “a masculine conception of life” (213).  Do you think it likely that if women organized society, such institutions as he lists in this passage would be replaced by others?
  29. what about Hewet’s questions so exhausts and frustrates Rachel?
  30. does Rachel’s desire for independence appear likely to overpower the competing desire for intimacy?
  31. do Hewet’s fiction-writing aspirations draw him closer to others, or push others away?
  32. does the novel suggest, with Hirst, that individuals are separated by circles of chalk?
  33. can the reader assist Hewet in resolving his epistemological quandary?  He claims humans cannot fully know one another, yet feels like he does indeed know the most important things about Rachel (218).  Does the narrative encourage us to embrace one possibility over the other?
  34. does the title of Hewet's novel-in-progress, "Silence, or the Things People Don't Say,” apply equally well to Woolf’s novel?
  35. why does happy Helen begin to share a pessimistic view of life w/ Rachel?
  36. does Helen’s policy of non-intervention come across as loving?
  37. which of the three moods that Rachel experiences in the week following her walk w/ Terence Hewet seems the healthiest?
  38. does Rachel find in the books she reads during this period an echo of her own feelings?
  39. a number of characters consider the nature of love. Does the novel privilege certain approaches and definitions over others?
  40. are men and women in this novel equally complex and capricious in terms of their emotional lives?
  41. Helen thinks Rachel inconsistent (221, etc.).  Does Helen prove more consistent than her niece?
  42. what various strategies does Woolf employ to criticize Christianity during the scene in which our main characters attend a service in the old chapel?
  43. Mr. Bax apparently reads, from The Book of Common Prayer, a passage which collects Psalms 56, 57, and 58.  Which elements does Woolf choose to quote, and what does she leave out?  Is her selection representative?  When looked at it in its entirety, does it sound like the “ravings” and “cursing” which the narrator calls it (227)?
  44. does the novel implicitly support, or counter, the following ideas in Mr. Bax's sermon?
  45. what so bothers Rachel about the service?
  46. what might Hirst’s three-lined “invocation to the Deity” contain?
  47. what so irritates Hewet that he abandons his friends and heads off on a lonely walk?
  48. what qualities does Hewet so value Rachel?
  49. has Rachel's limited education over the first twenty-four years of her life given her those qualities that Hewet so desires (chp 18), or is Rachel the way she is in spite of her upbringing? Or, is she what she is at the moment because of her past experience in combination with the peculiar social and personal circumstances of this particular vacation? Does this novel suggest that a failure to properly educate a woman at a young age is a kind of criminal negligence? Or . . .?
  50. does Evelyn’s outrage outweigh pleasure when recounting her most recent boy trouble?
  51. does Rachel sympathize with Evelyn’s desire to join women like Lillah Harrison in social activism?
  52. if we take Rachel at her word, in what does she believe?
  53. does Woolf intend us to validate Rachel’s opinions on life, other characters, and religion at each step of her internal journey?
  54. the text repeatedly mentions a "mystery" which "burdens" Rachel.  Attempt to pin down what it is that so weighs on Rachel's mind. [Maya A]
  55. is Rachel’s attack of Helen Ambrose (262) justified—is it accurate in its essentials?



Music (1927-28)
Dorrit Black


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu