The Voyage Out

A fine book, so far.

Wonderful storm at sea at the start of chapter 5.

The rest of the chapter is both more surprising and very different.

Richard Dalloway's kiss!

Virginia Woolf.

So far, numerous books have been alluded to, mostly literature, but some philosophy and some history.

Nothing else.

Homework: write an essay on that.

Chapter 6.

Helen could hardly restrain herself from saying out loud what she thought of a man who brought up his daughters so that at the age of twenty four she scarcely knew that men desired women and was terrified by a kiss.

She had good reason to think that Rachel had made herself incredibly ridiculous.

Hmm.

Sexual harassment?

But she is faulting Rachel and blaming her father.

(The mother is dead.)

Consider Helen's attitude as expressed in the early pages of this chapter.

Write an essay on that.

Men are more aggressive than women, not only sexually but in general.

I say more aggressive, not more assertive, and I know the difference.

Because their souls are more aggressive, or because their bodies are better machines of aggression - so to speak?

Is it about testosterone, or just muscles and body mass?

Anyway, Rachel's immediate reaction is hilarious, though certainly not intended to be that by Woolf.

So far as it is anger at men, that is, for the circumscription of her life intended, and much overdone, by her parents and adult relatives, to protect her from men.

But then VW does, in the end, find herself safe only in a lesbian relationship.

And her friendships are more comfortable with gay men.

Update.

Rachel has no idea of work or bourgeois ambition.

Consider her view of her own father.

Is that VW's own ignorance, her own view?