Gill Lowe

“WILD SWIMMING” by Gill Lowe Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke use water throughout their work as a metaphor for powerful emotional states. In “A Sketch of the Past,”(1985) Virginia uses an arresting simile,“I see myself as a fish in a stream; deflected; held in place; but cannot ...

‘There is no possibility of being witty withot a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick,’ Lady Sneerwell in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (1777). The malicious gene: nature or nurture? On 4th May 1928 Virginia Woolf reported in her diary that she had enjoyed Elizabeth Robins’ recollection of Julia Stephen: ‘she would suddenly say something so unexpected, from that Madonna face, one thought it vicious’ (Woolf, 1980, p.183). Leslie Stephen too was renowned for his intermittent acerbic criticism. Occasionally Woolf’s apparently calm demeanour was similarly disturbed by startling sharp verbal attacks. Woolf’s mordant written statements seem calculated and controlled, carefully constructed as in a performance, often aimed at individuals and groups for which she felt a specific animus. A word that recurs to describe Woolf is ‘malicious’. Contemporaries, critics and Woolf herself recognised her judgemental predisposition. Leonard Woolf observed that ‘a monolithic humour’ was shared with family members, ‘All male Stephens—and many of the females—whom I have known have had one marked characteristic which I always think Stephenesque....It consisted in a way of thinking and even more in a way of thinking and expressing their thoughts which one associates pre-eminently with Dr Johnson’ (Sowing, 1960, p. 184). Genes may be seen to affect the social behaviour of their bearers. Analysing some specific examples of Woolf’s caustic observations, this paper will adapt the metaphor of ‘the selfish gene’ to explore her tendency to maliciousness. It will consider whether this might have been inherited behaviour; learned from family attitudes; influenced by the writers she most appreciated and/or evolved as a species-preserving survival strategy, adopted in response to her cultural environment.

This paper explores the concept of the hinge in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Katherine Mansfield short fiction. It analyses instances of instability in these texts: psychological, postural, cultural, meteorological, diurnal, and seasonal. The argument makes use of Barthes to consider structural “nuclei” (hinge-points) in these narratives. Mrs. Dalloway is set in mid-June at the solstice which is a hinge-point of the year. The novel begins with doors being taken off their hinges and this unhinging leads to moments of enlightenment. The hinge is used metaphorically to suggest freedom and movement in time, space, class, and gender. A hinge both connects and separates. Gates and doors are used to show societal divisions and associations in these fictions. The hinge is considered as a paradoxical site of potential; a locus of decision-making or undecidability; of opening and closing; of “swinging both ways”. This trope is rich in significance and the paper considers a variety of re...

‘There is no possibility of being witty withot a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick,’ Lady Sneerwell in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (1777). The malicious gene: nature or nurture? On 4th May 1928 Virginia Woolf reported in her diary that she had enjoyed Elizabeth Robins’ recollection of Julia Stephen: ‘she would suddenly say something so unexpected, from that Madonna face, one thought it vicious’ (Woolf, 1980, p.183). Leslie Stephen too was renowned for his intermittent acerbic criticism. Occasionally Woolf’s apparently calm demeanour was similarly disturbed by startling sharp verbal attacks. Woolf’s mordant written statements seem calculated and controlled, carefully constructed as in a performance, often aimed at individuals and groups for which she felt a specific animus. A word that recurs to describe Woolf is ‘malicious’. Contemporaries, critics and Woolf herself recognised her judgemental predisposition. Leonard Woolf observed that ‘a monolithic humour’ was shared with family members, ‘All male Stephens—and many of the females—whom I have known have had one marked characteristic which I always think Stephenesque....It consisted in a way of thinking and even more in a way of thinking and expressing their thoughts which one associates pre-eminently with Dr Johnson’ (Sowing, 1960, p. 184). Genes may be seen to affect the social behaviour of their bearers. Analysing some specific examples of Woolf’s caustic observations, this paper will adapt the metaphor of ‘the selfish gene’ to explore her tendency to maliciousness. It will consider whether this might have been inherited behaviour; learned from family attitudes; influenced by the writers she most appreciated and/or evolved as a species-preserving survival strategy, adopted in response to her cultural environment.

The gendered maxim ‘men must work and women must weep’ comes from Charles Kingsley's 1851 ballad 'The Three Fishers'. Virginia Woolf appropriated 'Women Must Weep' for early version of Three Guineas, serialised in The Atlantic Monthly (1938). This chapter argues that the public nature of Woolf’s polemical anti-fascist essay may, concurrently, be read as a more intimate document about personal grief and grievance. For Woolf her sister, Vanessa Bell, was the weeping woman, devastated by the tragic death in 1937 of Julian Bell in the Spanish Civil War. Duncan Grant drafted posters (reproduced here) to raise money for refugee Spanish children, employing the trope of mothers cradling babies. Woolf’s contemporary, the German artist Käthe Kollwitz, a mother bereaved twice by war, repeated the poignant pietà image in numerous anti-war pieces. Picasso, inspired by Dora Maar whom he regarded privately as ‘the weeping woman’, created sixty mater dolorosa works in preparatio...

... Observe Perpetually” Dusinberre, Juliet.“Virginia Woolf and Montaigne.” Textual Practice 5 (1991): 219-241. Gillespie, Diane Filby. The Sisters' Arts: the Writing and Painting of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Syracuse and New York: Syracuse UP, 1991. Koutsantoni, Katerina. ...

This book reconsiders Virginia Woolf's work for the 21st century focusing on coevolution, duality and contradiction. These 11 newly commissioned essays represent the evolution, or coevolution, of Woolf studies in the early 21st-century. Divided into 5 parts - Self and Identity; Language and Translation; Culture and Commodification; Human, Animal and Nonhuman; and Gender, Sexuality and Multiplicity - the essays represent the most recent scholarship on the subjective, provisional, and contingent nature of Woolf's work. The expert contributors consider unstable constructions of self and identity, and language and translation from multiple angles, including shifting textualities, culture and the marketplace, critical animal studies, and discourses that fracture and revise gender and sexuality. It extends existing critical work that considers a multiplicity of constructions of 'Virginia Woolf'. It demonstrates original and diverse ways of reading this canonical (and contr...

This paper was part of featured key-note panel called 'The Other Sides of the Fence: Borders and Boundaries'. Virginia Woolf and the Natural World, 20th International Virginia Woolf Conference. Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky

“WILD SWIMMING” by Gill Lowe Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke use water throughout their work as a metaphor for powerful emotional states. In “A Sketch of the Past,”(1985) Virginia uses an arresting simile,“I see myself as a fish in a stream; deflected; held in place; but cannot ...

A version of this paper was published pp. 215-221 in Contradictory Woolf: Selected Papers from the Twenty-First Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, edited by Derek Ryan and Stella Bolaki (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press, 2012.

This paper was published in *Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries*, edited by Julie Vandivere and Megan Hicks (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2015), xx, 234 pp. ISBN 978-1-942954-08-8. The selected papers from the Twenty-Fifth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf is published in partnership with Liverpool University Press. The Conference was hosted by Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania and ran from June 4-7, 2015. This paper explores the concept of the hinge in Virginia Woolf’s *Mrs. Dalloway* and Katherine Mansfield short fiction. It analyses instances of instability in these texts: psychological, postural, cultural, meteorological, diurnal, and seasonal. The argument makes use of Barthes to consider structural “nuclei” (hinge-points) in these narratives. *Mrs. Dalloway* is set in mid-June at the solstice which is a hinge-point of the year. The novel begins with doors being taken off their hinges and this unhinging leads to moments of enlightenment. ...

... Observe Perpetually” Dusinberre, Juliet.“Virginia Woolf and Montaigne.” Textual Practice 5 (1991): 219-241. Gillespie, Diane Filby. The Sisters' Arts: the Writing and Painting of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Syracuse and New York: Syracuse UP, 1991. Koutsantoni, Katerina. ...

'The malicious gene: an evolutionary games strategy? Woolf’s hawkish inheritance' is by Gill Lowe, University of Suffolk, UK. The paper has been accepted for publication in the Selected Papers from the 26th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf  held at Leeds Trinity University between 16-19 June 2016.

This paper explores the concept of the hinge in Virginia Woolf’s *Mrs. Dalloway* and Katherine Mansfield short fiction. It analyses instances of instability in these texts: psychological, postural, cultural, meteorological, diurnal, and seasonal. The argument makes use of Barthes to consider structural “nuclei” (hinge-points) in these narratives. *Mrs. Dalloway* is set in mid-June at the solstice which is a hinge-point of the year. The novel begins with doors being taken off their hinges and this unhinging leads to moments of enlightenment. The hinge is used metaphorically to suggest freedom and movement in time, space, class, and gender. A hinge both connects and separates. Gates and doors are used to show societal divisions and associations in these fictions. The hinge is considered as a paradoxical site of potential; a locus of decision-making or undecidability; of opening and closing; of 'swinging both ways'. This trope is rich in significance and the paper considers a variety of related ideas: axels, still points, rotation, oscillation, liminality, translation, transition and trespass.

This paper is published in the selected papers from *Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries*,  the Twenty-Fifth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, hosted by Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania which ran from June 4-7, 2015.

The collection was edited by Julie Vandivere and Megan Hicks and published by Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press in partnership with Liverpool University Press , 2015, xx, 234 pp. ISBN 978-1-942954-08-8

A version of this paper was published pp. 215-221 in Contradictory Woolf: Selected Papers from the Twenty-First Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, edited by Derek Ryan and Stella Bolaki (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Digital Press, 2012.