Studies in Major Literary Authors Edited by William E. Cain Professor of English Wellesley College A Routledge Series Studies in Major Literary Authors William E. Cain, General Editor Reading and Mapping Hardy’s Roads Henry Miller and Religion Scott Rode Thomas Nesbit Creating Yoknapatawpha The Magic Lantern Readers and Writers in Faulkner’s Fiction Representation of the Double in Dickens Owen Robinson Maria Cristina Paganoni No Place for Home The Environmental Unconscious in the Spatial Constraint and Character Flight in the Fiction of Don DeLillo Novels of Cormac McCarthy Elise A. Martucci Jay Ellis James Merrill The Machine that Sings Knowing Innocence Modernism, Hart Crane, and the Culture of Reena Sastri the Body Yeats and Theosophy Gordon A. Tapper Ken Monteith Influential Ghosts Pynchon and the Political A Study of Auden’s Sources Samuel Thomas Rachel Wetzsteon Paul Auster’s Postmodernity D.H. Lawrence’s Border Crossing Brendan Martin Colonialism in His Travel Writings and “Leadership” Novels Editing Emily Dickinson Eunyoung Oh The Production of an Author Lena Christensen Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecology Kenneth R. Cervelli Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism Sports, Narrative, and Nation in the John Cant Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald Jarom Lyle McDonald Our Scene is London Ben Jonson’s City and the Space of the Author Shelley’s Intellectual System and its James D. Mardock Epicurean Background Michael A. Vicario Poetic Language and Political Engagement in the Poetry of Keats Modernist Aesthetics and Consumer Jack Siler Culture in the Writings of Oscar Wilde Paul L. Fortunato Politics and Aesthetics in The Diary of Virginia Woolf Milton’s Uncertain Eden Joanne Campbell Tidwell Understanding Place in Paradise Lost Andrew Mattison Politics and Aesthetics in The Diary of Virginia Woolf Joanne Campbell Tidwell New York London First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2008 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including pho- tocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tidwell, Joanne Campbell, 1973– Politics and aesthetics in the diary of Virginia Woolf / by Joanne Campbell Tidwell. p. cm. — (Studies in major literary authors) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-415-95817-2 ISBN-10: 0-415-95817-2 1. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—Diaries. 2. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—Political and social views. 3. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—Aesthetics. I. Title. PR6045.O72Z8816 2008 828’.91203—dc22 [B] 2007034640 ISBN 0-203-93078-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-95817-2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-93078-9 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-95817-2 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-93078-6 (ebk) Contents Permissions vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction “Almost a face of its own”: The Diary of Virginia Woolf 1 Chapter One “But my diary has ever been scornful of stated rules!” The Diary as Self in Virginia Woolf’s Diary 8 Chapter Two “The store house of his most private self”: The Diary of Virginia Woolf in Context 31 Chapter Three “What sort of diary should I like mine to be?” The Diaries of VirginaWoolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Vera Brittain 52 Chapter Four “Little waves that life makes”: Virginia Woolf’s Diary and Feminist Modernist Aesthetics 71 Conclusion “I’m aware of something permanent & real in my existence”: Possibilities for Virginia Woolf’s Diary 102 Notes 109 v vi Contents Bibliography 111 Index 117 Permissions Chapter one appeared in a different form in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, volume 21, number 1. Excerpts from A PASSIONATE APPRENTICE: THE EARLY JOURNALS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, copyright 1990 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Excerpts from THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, Volume I: 1915–1919, copyright 1977 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Excerpts from THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, Volume II: 1920–1924, copyright 1978 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Excerpts from THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, Volume III: 1925–1930, copyright 1980 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Excerpts from THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, Volume IV: 1931–1935, copyright 1982 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Excerpts from THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, Volume V: 1936–1941, copyright 1984 by Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. Excerpts from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Anne Olivier Bell, published by Hogarth Press. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. Excerpts from A Passionate Apprentice by Virginia Woolf, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, published by Hogarth Press. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. The passages from Vera Brittain’s Chronicle of Youth; Great War Diary, 1913–1917 are published by permission of Mark Bostridge and Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Literary Executors for the Vera Brit- tain Estate, 1970. vii Acknowledgments This book is a slightly revised version of my dissertation. Consequently, I would like to thank the members of my dissertation advisory committee, Virginia M. Kouidis, Jonathan W. Bolton, and Christopher M. Keirstead of Auburn University, for their help and inspiration. My husband James deserves much appreciation for his unswerving confidence in me, and I would like thank my parents, Doug and Mary Ann, for reading multiple drafts of my dissertation and taking a genuine interest in my work. My brother Mike helped by getting me out of the office and into the woods for rejuvenation. I would like to thank my friends, especially Jessica, for their constant support and commiseration. ix