''Between the Acts'' is the final novel by
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born ...
. It was published shortly after her death in 1941. Although the manuscript had been completed, Woolf had yet to make final revisions.
The book describes the mounting, performance, and audience of a play at a
festival
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival co ...
in a small English village, just before the outbreak of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. Since the play is inside the story, much of the novel is written in verse, and it is thus one of Woolf's most lyrical works.
Plot
The story takes place in a country house somewhere in England, just before the Second World War, over the course of a single day. It is the day when the annual pageant is to be performed on the grounds of the house. The pageant is traditionally a celebration of English history, and it is attended by the entire local community.
The owner of the house is Bartholomew Oliver, a widower and retired
Indian Army
The Indian Army is the land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), who is a four ...
officer. His sister Lucy Swithin, who is also living in the house, is slightly eccentric but kind. Bartholomew has a son, Giles, who has a job in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
and is restless and frustrated. Giles has two children with his wife Isa, who has lost interest in him. Isa is attracted to a local gentleman farmer, Rupert Haines, although the relationship goes no further than eye contact. Mrs. Manresa and her friend William Dodge arrive and stay for the pageant. The pageant has been written by Miss La Trobe, a strange and domineering spinster.
The day is interspersed with events leading up to the pageant. Lucy fusses around making preparations for the decorations and the food. Bartholomew frightens his grandson by jumping out at him from behind a newspaper and then calls him a coward when he cries. Mrs. Manresa flirts provocatively with Bartholomew and Giles. William Dodge, assumed by the others to be homosexual, is the subject of homophobic thoughts by many of the others but is friendly with Lucy.
The pageant occurs in the evening, and it has three main parts which are broken up by intermissions, during which the audience members interact with one another. Following a
prologue
A prologue or prolog (from Greek πρόλογος ''prólogos'', from πρό ''pró'', "before" and λόγος ''lógos'', "word") is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier story that ...
by a child who represents England, the first scene is a
Shakespearean scene with romantic dialogue. The second scene is a parody of a
restoration comedy, and the third scene is a panorama of
Victorian
Victorian or Victorians may refer to:
19th century
* Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign
** Victorian architecture
** Victorian house
** Victorian decorative arts
** Victorian fashion
** Victorian literature ...
triumph based on a policeman directing the traffic in
Hyde Park. The final scene is entitled "Ourselves", at which point Miss La Trobe shocks the audience by having the cast turn mirrors on them.
When the pageant ends and the audience disperses, Miss La Trobe retreats to the village pub and, brooding over what she perceives to be the pageant's failure, begins to plan her next drama. As darkness descends, cloaking the country house, Giles and Isa are left alone, presumably resulting in conflict and reconciliation.
Style
The novel "sums up and magnifies Woolf's chief preoccupations: the transformation of life through art, sexual ambivalence, and meditation on the themes of flux of time and life, presented simultaneously as corrosion and rejuvenation—all set in a highly imaginative and symbolic narrative encompassing almost all of English history." It is the most lyrical of all her works, not only in feeling but in style, being chiefly written in verse. While Woolf's work can be understood as consistently in dialogue with the
Bloomsbury Group, particularly due to its tendency (informed by
G.E. Moore, among others) towards doctrinaire rationalism, it is not a simple recapitulation of the coterie's ideals.
Publication history
Woolf completed ''Between the Acts'' in November 1940 while living at
Monk's House
Monk's House is a 16th-century weatherboarded cottage in the village of Rodmell, three miles (4.8 km) south of Lewes, East Sussex, England. The writer Virginia Woolf and her husband, the political activist, journalist and editor Leonard Woo ...
in
Sussex. Her biography of
Roger Fry had been published in July, and she had been disappointed in its reception. The Woolfs' London homes had been destroyed in
The Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'.
The Germa ...
in September and October. Woolf fell into a depression before her suicide on 28 March 1941, and the novel was published posthumously later that year.
At the time of her death Woolf had yet to correct the typescript of the novel, and a number of critics consider it to be unfinished.
[Hussey, 'Introduction', xxxix] The book has a note by Woolf's husband,
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own w ...
:
References
Bibliography
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**Vol. I: Virginia Stephen 1882 to 1912. ''London: Hogarth Press. 1972''
**Vol. II: Virginia Woolf 1912 to 1941. ''London: Hogarth Press. 1972.''
''archived version''*Hussey, Mark (2011). “Introduction.” ''Between the Acts''. Cambridge University Press, xxxiv-lxxiv.
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External links
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{{Authority control
1941 British novels
Modernist novels
Novels by Virginia Woolf
Novels published posthumously
Hogarth Press books
Unfinished novels
Novels set in England