Michael Rosenthal
VIRGINIA WOOLF
It
is only recently that Virginia Woolf emerged from the limbo
of polite esteem in which she has generally been held into the forefront of
the contemporary cultural and literary scene. Having languished for decades
in the shadow of her august fellow modernists like Joyce, Lawrence, and
Conrad, Woolf appears at last
to
have secured for herself the stamp of the
authentic classic that had previously managed
to
elude her. The obligatory
if
slightly stale respect invariably accorded her by readers has now given way to
a passionate, searching interest in every aspect of her life . The torrent of
Newsletters, Quarterlies, Miscellanies, English Institute Conferences , and
Modern Language Association Sessions, among other forms of tribute , attest
to
her arrival. Virginia Woolf is a very hot literary property indeed.
The impulses behind this adulation are worth exploring, particularly as
they tell us a good deal more about our world than they do about Woolf. To
begin with, it is clear that the rediscovery of Woolf is part of the larger phe–
nomenon of the canonization of Bloomsbury which has been in process for
the past seven or eight years. If we want a specific date for its beginnings ,
we could point
to
the publication of Holroyd's biography of Lytton Strachey
in 1967.
It
is
a marvelous irony of social history that Virginia Woolfs Blooms–
bury associations, which for years had damned her in the earnest eyes of the
Leavises and others, now constitute one of her strongest sources of appeal.
For reasons that are less literary than cultural, the cloud of moral oppro–
brium shrouding Bloomsbury's work and activities has lifted, revealing not
a horrid group of jejune invens but an emancipated, highly civilized group
of friends leading productive lives free from the taint of pieties and conven–
tions. No longer viewed as a sign of degeneracy, their legendary polymor–
phous perversity is taken as an admirable example of a highly desirable
freewheeling personal and sexual style. Exemplary indeed, not cautionary,
as Nigel Nicolson 's best-selling portrait of the unusual relationship between
his parents indicates. At a time when all instances of traditional sexual
