PHYLLIS ROSE
451
antidote. At such times she relapsed into the Immured Maiden , writing
to fit some imaginary paternal standard of rea lity and fi ction , re–
nouncing h er terror-fill ed individuality.
Her political con sciousness- and feminism was her only true
politics-ebbed and fl owed, and there is a striking corresponden ce
between its heights and times o f her good work. H er writing was at its
best in the twenti es when her femini sm was firmes t.
It
fa ltered in the
thirti es under the onsla ug ht o f the very different noti ons of wh at
con stituted politics of the young men of the left. Losing her femini st
perspective, sh e los t confidence in h erself.
It
was the persona l fa ith
whi ch gave her the courage to write authenticall y, without warping
her tal ent to suit phantom models of validity. Writing
Three Guineas,
as
I
see it, ena bl ed her
to
write
Between the Acts,
one last novel in her
own vo ice and style.
"My terror of rea l life has a lways kept me in a nunnery, " she wrote
to
Eth el Smyth in 1930, when they were rela tively new fri ends and
Virginia was exp la inin g h erself. Unlike Ethel, the eccentri c composer
who was una fra id to compare the slow movement of a symphony to the
movement o f h er own bowels, Virginia had a lways been a sexua l
coward - so goes her confess ion . Then she had gotten married and her
bra in s had gon e up in firework s, and a lthough she was n earl y crippled
by the fi erce di sc ip line of madness, sh e went on
to
discover in it a lmos t
everything sh e wrote about. Whil e o ther versions of her life empha–
sized the way in whi ch her development had been stunted by particu lar
men or by pa tri archa l a ttitudes mo re genera ll y, this version emphas izes
fear, coward ice, and th e uses of madness, and an y just portrait o f h er
inn er wor ld must keep in ba la nce bo th th ese pressures, the psychic and
the soc ia l, w ith o ut los in g sight of the fact tha t, desp ite everything, she
was a creative, producti ve, and vita l person who made life yield up its
frui ts.
Writing h ad been h er ref uge as a child. She escaped from the
emoti on a l turmo il and fitful h ypocr isy of down sta irs life a t H yde Park
Ga te to the quiet of her own room, w here the authentic life could be
lived, th e life o f the mind . Some girl s play a t dress ing up , copying their
mothers; she p layed a t letters, copy ing her fa th er, until tha t play
became the chi ef justifi ca ti on o f her
I
ife. The presenta tion of h er work
remained throughout her life a source of anxiety, as it was when sh e
and Vanessa left a copy of the
H yde Park Gate News
next to their
mother 's cha ir , for there was a lways the poss ibility tha t approva l
would n o t be forth com ing. But if presentation was hazardous, the act
of writing was always bracing. Art provided the way of recon ciling
person al con trad icti on s int o harmoni ous wholes, of fillin g, let us say,
