On the whole, an outstanding work

The ending is handled beautifully.

The Voyage Out.

Just So

Mrs. Thornberry, an old woman, says the odd thing is that one never felt old.

She always felt that she was 25.

I am a man of 69.

I would've said 35.

After I actually was 35, of course.

Men mature in character, as well as physically, later than women.

Chapter 24.

The Voyage Out.

PS

Manafort is 68, 69 in April, just before my wife.

He has not one gray hair.

Nor does Trump, come to that.

He is 71, 72 in June.

Right.

My hair is more salt than pepper, and my Van Dyke is whiter than that.

Evelyn Murgatroyd

With this character, Ms. Woolf mocks politically engaged progressives.

Evelyn is very bright, but the kind of activist who thinks a few marchers can, to reference a cause popular among marchers in Pittsburgh, "end rape and take back the night".

In another place in the book she explains that if a few smart young women went out throughout the cities of England and gave a good talking to to prostitutes on the street they could put an end to prostitution quite quickly.

Ten people who really set their minds to it can fix it all, says Evelyn.

The Voyage Out, chapter 24 (for example).

The Second Sex

De Beauvoir's title was apt.

Women are, by nature, the second sex.

Reading Woolf, The Voyage Out.

But it has nothing to do with intellectual incapacity and not much to do with other psychological differences.

It comes down mostly to differences in our bodies.

Consider the source

If I had had all the doubt and fear Rachel and Terence have after their engagement I would never have gone through with it.

The Voyage Out

Oh.

The source is Woolf, herself.

How women can be free

The vote and £ 500 a year.

She said when that was a hell of a lot.

Oddly, Aristotle would have agreed, if he had thought women could manage it.

And he did not.

Reading The Voyage Out.

The Voyage Out

Chapters 6 through 8.

What a fine writer she is.

And this is her first.

PS

I am reminded by the ignorance of women depicted in this novel that during the Victorian Era there were more prostitutes in London per capita than at any time before or since.

That makes perfect sense.

That was a time, above all others, when men had to appreciate that, if you wanted something important done right, you could not rely on an amateur, no matter how inspired.

You had to go to a professional.

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?

Mrs. Dalloway

Still, like Tolstoy or James, you can't read this without once in a while recalling in bitterness that Revolution doesn't really work.

What fills a theater today?

Comic book movies or other action films.

Or porn.

What filled theaters in the 60s?

Tennessee Williams, Conrad, Shakespeare, Albee.

Or musicals like My Fair Lady.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway.

Chiefly, it's the beauty of the thing

Apollonian art.

In beautiful prose.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway.

Cultural Revolution

How many millions of his countrymen did Mao doom in this power struggle?

This struggle not to be killed?

Before he became, in the end, according to his physician, Tiberius on Capri, as reported by Suetonius.

Who did vastly, inexpressibly less harm to Rome than Mao did to China.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway.

Virginia Woolf, 1925.