Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
PART ONE
1. The Enormous Eye
2. The Reluctant Satirist
3. Jacob'sR oom:W oolf's Satiric Elegy
PART TWO
4. Class and Money
5. Mrs. Dalloway and the Social System
6. The Bonds of Family Life
7. The Domestic Politics of To the Lighthouse
8. Woolf's Feminism in Historical Perspective
9. Anger and Conciliation in A Room of One's Own and Three
Guineas
10. Pacifism Without Hope
11. Between the Acts and the Coming of War
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Alex Zwerdling is University Professor of English at George Washington University.
"The most enlightened account of the real woman to appear for years."--"Observer
"The most enlightened account of the real woman to appear for years."--"Observer
The majority of Woolf studies produced in the wake of the 1970s discovery of her unpublished diaries, memoirs and letters cast Woolf through her esthetics, use of literary tradition, exploration of the psyche and ``dark side''as an ``ivory tower'' introvert. In this lively and closely argued study, University of California professor Zwerdling (Yeats and the Heroic Ideal, etc.) aims at a more balanced view, stressing Woolf's social vision. Through a detailed examination of such themes as feminism, class, money, politics and war, he demonstrates forcefully that her major workfrom Jacob's Room to Between the Acts (with the exception of The Waves, whose intense subjectivity Woolf herself considered a dead end)exhibits a ``dialogue between public and private voices.'' Since Zwerdling is more intent on characterizing than evaluating that often ironic dialogue, however, he does relatively little to substantiate his estimate of Woolf as a major writer. (June 2)
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