‘She’s so-so-well, so like a tight plait,’ Rachel floundered. ‘Jane Austin? I don’t like Jane Austin,’ said Rachel. I really couldn’t exist without the Brontës! Don’t you love them? Still, on the whole, I’d rather live without them than without Jane Austin.’ 'Wuthering Heights! said Clarissa, 'Ah-that’s more in my line. She even has the characters discuss Austen and Brontë at one point:

Woolf deliberately recalls nineteenth century novels to our attention, those of Jane Austin and Charlotte Brontë in particular I’ve noted several examples in the updates. At other times, the thoughts and speeches which Woolf gives her characters, and Helen in particular, would not be out of place in a novel of the twenty-first century. If this book were a painting instead of a novel, it would be focused entirely on Helen so intrinsic to everything is her role in Woolf’s composition.Īt times, and Helen’s embroidery is just one example, the themes, and the treatment of them, harken back to the nineteenth century. I’d like to think that Helen and I are a little alike in how we see the world tree bark isn’t always brown nor rivers always blue, just as book reviews don’t always have to follow a standard format and limit themselves to summaries of the plot and lists of the characters.

But Helen, as we soon find out, likes to do things differently, even when it comes to embroidery: she chose a thread from the vari-coloured tangle that lay in her lap, and sewed red into the bark of a tree, or yellow into a river torrent. Unlike me, Helen can’t share thoughts about books with the world via a computer screen her book thoughts are kept within the confines of her mind while her creative urges are directed instead towards her embroidery screen. Like me, Helen is a middle-aged woman who reads a lot. Helen Ambrose’s fictional existence is happening one hundred years before my real-life one but in some respects we aren’t very different. The following line describing leading character Helen Ambrose catches my eye: She had her embroidery frame set up on deck, with a little table by her side on which lay open a black volume of philosophy. My copy of the book is on the desk beside me and I’m sorting through the various passages I’ve underlined looking for the slant that will please me most. I’m sitting in front of my computer screen wondering which of several angles to choose in order to make this review something more than just another account of the plot and characters of The Voyage Out (1915).

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf