Authors: Virginia Woolf
The Voyage Out (58 page)
OTES
C
HAPTER
I
1.
Bluebeard:
dark-bearded figure from popular mythology who murdered his wives and kept them in a locked chamber in his castle.
2.
Lars Porsena … suffer wrong no more:
from
Lays of Ancient Rome
(1842) by Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800–59), English essayist and historian.
3.
Nelson:
probably Viscount Horatio Nelson (1758–1805), captain in the English Royal Navy who suffered many injuries throughout his years in battle, including the blinding of his right eye and the amputation of his right arm.
4.
Rotherhithe:
area in Surrey that was once a garden but by Woolf’s time was converted to commercial docks.
5.
Euphrosyne: Greek goddess of grace and beauty.
6.
Peterhouse:
college in Cambridge, England.
7.
Bruce collection … Pump in Neville’s Row:
fictitious references.
8.
“The Coliseum” … Queen Alexandra:
the first print is a depiction of the Colosseum in Rome and the second of the wife of Edward VII.
HAPTER
II
1.
Pindar:
(c. 522–438
B.C.)
chief lyric poet of Greece; although he wrote numerous odes, only
Epinicia (Odes of Victory)
, in four books, have survived entire.
2.
Petronius … Catullus … Etruscan vases:
Arbiter Petronius (d.
A.D.
66), Roman author of
The Satyricon
, a satirical romance about the licentious life of the upper class in Italy. Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84–54
B.C.)
, Roman lyric poet. The Etruscans were the Romans’ principal early rivals and were at the height of their civilization in 500
B.C.
3.
Coryphaeus:
fictitious author.
4.
Tristan: from
Tristan and Isolde
, an opera by Richard Wagner (1813–83), German writer; the following lines are Isolde’s.
5.
Cowper’s Letters: English poet William Cowper (1731–1800).
HAPTER
III
1.
Fielding’s grave:
Henry Fielding (1707–54), English novelist and political journalist best known for his novel
Tom Jones;
he died in Lisbon, Portugal.
2.
Whistler:
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), American artist; some of his paintings, etchings, and lithographs depict the London riverside and other waterside scenery.
3.
Shelley … ‘Adonais’:
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), English Romantic poet; his elegy on the death of John Keats, “Adonais,” was published in 1821.
4.
Matthew Arnold, ‘What a set! What a set!’:
Victorian poet and prose writer, Matthew Arnold (1822–88); the quote comes from the essay “Shelley” in his
Essays in Criticism
(1865) and refers to Shelley’s personal life and friends.
5.
Antigone: Sophocles (c. 496–406
B.C.)
, Greek playwright, author of the tragedy of Antigone. Lines 332–37, translated by Gilbert Murray:
Wonders are many, but none there be
So strange, so fell, as the child of man.
He rangeth over the whitening sea,
Through wintery winds he pursues his plan:
About his going the deeps unfold,
The crests o’er hang, but he passeth clear.
6.
twenty Clytemnestras:
in Greek mythology, Clytemnestra was the unfaithful and treacherous wife of Agamemnon. She does not appear in Sophocles’s play
Antigone.
7.
a Reynolds or a Romney:
two English portrait painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) and George Romney (1734–1802).
8.
Bayreuth:
German town that is the site of the Wagner festival.
9.
Parsifal: Wagner’s last opera, first staged in 1882.
10.
Watts and Joachim:
George Frederic Watts (1817–1904), English painter, and Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), Hungarian violinist.
11.
Pitt:
William Pitt or Pitt the Younger (1759–1806), British statesman and prime minister (1783–1801, 1804–1906).
12.
the little white volume of Pascal:
Blaise Pascal (1623–62), French mathematician, physicist, theologian, and man-of-letters whose work on Christianity,
Pensées
, was published in 1670.
HAPTER
IV
1.
Full fathom five thy father lies: The Tempest
, I, ii.
2.
Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Henry George … Emerson and Thomas Hardy:
T. H. Huxley (1825–95), English biologist and foremost expounder of Darwinism; Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), English evolutionary philosopher and leading advocate of “Social Darwinism” whose main work is the nine-volume
System of Synthetic Philosophy
(1862–93); Henry George (1839–97), American social reformer and economist who wrote
Progress and Poverty
(1879); Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), American poet and essayist, a transcendentalist in philosophy, a rationalist in religion, and an advocate of spiritual individualism; Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), English novelist and poet whose famous novels were generally tragic and pessimistic.
3.
Samuel Johnson:
(1709–84), lexicographer, critic and poet, known for his
Dictionary of the English Language
and
The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets.
Dalloway misquotes from a poem attributed to Johnson: “Here lies poor duck/That Samuel Johnson trod on.”
4.
Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë (1818–48), English novelist and poet; her only novel,
Wuthering Heights
, was published in 1847. Her sister, Charlotte Brontë (1816–55), is best know for her novel
Jane Eyre
(1847).
5.
Shelley … world’s slow stain:
lines from Shelley’s “Adonais.”
HAPTER
V
1.
‘Good, then’ … Professor Henry Sidgwick:
the quote is from
Principia Ethica
(1903) by Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore (1873–1958); Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), English utilitarian philosopher and professor at Cambridge whose best-known work is
Methods of Ethics
(1874).
2.
Burke
… American Rebellion: Edmund Burke (1729–97), British statesman and political philosopher; Dalloway probably refers to his published speech “On Conciliation with America” (1775) and his letter “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790).
3.
Bright and Disraeli:
John Bright (1811–89), radical British statesman and orator whose name was closely associated with the Reform Act of 1867 and free-trade laws; Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), British statesman and twice prime minister (1868, 1874–80) who was also a novelist.
HAPTER
VIII
1.
Asquith … Austen Chamberlain:
H. H. Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (1852–1928), was prime minister, 1908–16. Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) was chancellor of the exchequer, 1903–1905.
HAPTER
IX
1.
Wordsworth … “Prelude”:
William Wordsworth (1770–1850), English Romantic poet whose long autobiographical poem, “The Prelude,” was published posthumously in 1850.
2.
Beowulf to Swinburne: Beowulf
, a late-tenth-century Old English epic poem; Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909), English poet and critic associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
3.
Modern Love … John Donne:
Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads
(1862) is a series of fifty connected poems by George Meredith (1828–1909), English novelist and poet. John Donne (1572–1631), English poet known best for his Metaphysical love poetry.
4.
I speak as one … the Curtain:
last stanza of Thomas Hardy’s poem “He Abjures Love” (see note 2, Chapter IV).
5.
Coptic:
language related to ancient Egyptian.
HAPTER
X
1.
Henrik Ibsen: (1828–1906) Norwegian playwright and poet whose plays include
A Doll’s House
(1879) and
Hedda Gabler
(1890).
2.
Diana of the Crossways:
the beautiful heroine, whose marriage is failing, in George Meredith’s 1885 novel
Diana of the Crossways.
3.
Nora:
heroine of Ibsen’s
A Doll’s House.
4.
Defoe, Maupassant:
Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), English political journalist and novelist; his novels include
Robinson Crusoe
(1719) and
Moll
Flanders
(1722). Guy de Maupassant (1850–93), French novelist and short-story writer.
5.
Garibaldi:
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82), Italian patriot who joined numerous revolutionary wars waged against the Italian government. In 1834 he escaped a death sentence by fleeing to South America.
HAPTER
XII
1.
Protectionist:
leading issue of the election of 1906—whether to support free trade or the protection of British industries against foreign competition.
2.
Alexander Pope:
(1688–1744) English poet whose writings were formed on classical models and are often satirical or political.
HAPTER
XIII
1.
“Plato” … “Jorrocks” … “Marlowe”:
Plato (c. 427–348
B.C.)
, the Greek philosopher; John Jorrocks, the Cockney city grocer, a celebrated character in the humorous sporting novels of R. S. Surtees (1803–64) who first appears in
Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities
(1838). Sophocles (see note 5, Chapter III). Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), English satirist whose works include
Gulliver’s Travels
(1726). Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), French novelist who wrote a series of novels depicting French society,
La Comédie humaine.
Wordsworth (see note 1, Chapter IX). Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), English Romantic poet and critic whose works include “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Christabel.” Pope (see note 2, Chapter XII). Johnson (see note 3, Chapter IV). Joseph Addison (1672–1719), English essayist and politician. Shelley (see note 3, Chapter III). John Keats (1795–1821), English Romantic poet whose works include “Lamia” and “The Eve of St. Agnes.” Christopher Marlowe (1564–93), English playwright who was the most important predecessor of Shakespeare.
2.
La Cousine Bette: novel by Balzac, published in 1847, part of
La Comédie humaine.
3.
Wedekind … Donne … Webster:
Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), German playwright best known for his unconventional tragedies. Donne (see note 3, Chapter IX). John Webster (c. 1580–1625), English playwright who is best known for his two tragedies,
The White Devil
(1612) and
The Duchess of Malfi
(1623).
HAPTER
XVI
1.
John Stuart Mill:
(1806–73) English empiricist philosopher and social reformer who was among the first to fight for women’s suffrage; author of
Utilitarianism
(1863) and
The Subjection of Women
(1869).
HAPTER
XIX
1.
Euphues: John Lyly (c. 1554–1606), English writer;
Euphues
is his two-part prose romance (1578, 1580).
2.
Lord Curzon:
George Nathaniel Curzon (1859–1925), English statesman who served as viceroy of India between 1898–1905; in 1907 he was named chancellor of Oxford.
HAPTER
XX
1.
Whoever you are … all will be useless:
from
Leaves of Grass
(1855), the poem by the American writer Walt Whitman (1819–92).
HAPTER
XXV
1.
Milton:
John Milton (1608–74), English poet whose work includes
Paradise Lost
(1667) and “Lycidas” (1638). The following lines come from
Comus
(1637).
2.
They wrestled up … dropped awhile to rest:
from “A New Forest Ballad” by Charles Kingsley (1819–75), English novelist and poet.
3.
Peor and Baalim … mooned Astaroth:
from “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” (1629), by Milton.
HAPTER
XXVII
1.
Maternity—
by Michael Jessop:
a fictitious novel.
OMMENTARY
E. M. FORSTER
VIRGINIA WOOLF
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
W. H. AUDEN
E. M. FORSTER
[Perhaps] the first comment to make on [Virginia Woolf’s]
The Voyage Out
is that it is absolutely unafraid, and that its courage springs, not from naiveté, but from education. … Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as
Wuthering Heights
, though by a different path, a book which, while written by a woman and presumably from a woman’s point of view, soars straight out of local questionings into the intellectual day.
Mrs Woolf’s success is more remarkable since there is one serious defect in her equipment: her chief characters are not vivid. There is nothing false in them, but when she ceases to touch them they cease, they do not stroll out of their sentences, and even develop a tendency to merge shadowlike.
