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July 16, 1997
Dear Tanica,
I was also rereading this for the second time, and I really believe that it was much more powerful the second time. I was interested in your comments concerning the opening sentence. I had not seen that as a metaphor for marriage. That it was narrow and that they could not walk beside each other seemed to me to indicate that they were not completely "in tune" with each other. I do think you're right. It is so difficult, now and then, for two people to be married and to stay married when it seems that there are so many obstacles against it.
This is also interesting because I have learned that Woolf was ever so briefly engaged to Lytton Strachey and that he encouraged Leonard Woolf to propose to Virginia Stephen. This bit of Woolf's biography is found on page 276 of Hussey's book Virginia Woolf: A-Z. This occurs during the time she is writing her many drafts of Voyage Out. It really does seem to me to be about a journey into adulthood, which for many does include marriage. Perhaps those bystanders who are so rude are what Woolf perceives to be around her as she determines her own way through the "narrow streets" that she has seen. Society as she observes it provides this narrowness in the "post Victorian age"; it seems to me that her friends would serve as almost the opposite vision--except that many of them are male.
I also think the narrow walls you mention surround her when she's ill. A mental breakdown must seem like walls surrounding you and those, even those trying to help you, must be intruders. When Rachel turns her back to Terence during her final illness, which would serve as a wall, wouldn't it?
If companionship is a part of marriage, did Woolf ever really see a model of it in her life? Stella dies so early. Vanessa and Clive Bell then would be the models for her as she begins this first novel shortly after their marriage. I truly think you have discovered something I had not thought about it. I guess that having been married almost thirty years makes the obstacles a little less daunting, even though there are still some there.
I have mixed emotions about Rachel's death. I still cry when she dies; I find it difficult not to cry over the death of a young person, fictional or not, because I believe life is so great. I believe she didn't want to be married; which is not necessarily an indictment against Hewet, but against the system as she saw it. She saw Mrs. Thornbury, Mrs. Dalloway, her aunt, Susan, and Evelyn. The choices were such that she really didn't want to make a choice. She didn't see real companionship in any of the models she had; most of those were lop-sided and male-dominated. She really didn't have a choice, and I really do believe that she decided that it was easier to make no choices. So, she did not fight against dying. The Voyage Out was a voyage which Rachel was able to start, but from which she had no way to return. There was no satisfactory ending of this journey for her and that makes it all the more a tragedy.
As young women read Voyage today, I hope that they can see more choices than Rachel can. I hope that they find role models to suit the life style they want for themselves--married, not married, with or without children, working or not working.
As long as it is a choice, not something forced upon them by family, society, or anyone else's expectations. We may not be able to read Virginia Woolf into The Voyage Out as Rachel, but we can see that it's not the voyage we want to make. We want different results. I like to look at this as a successful journey for Virginia Woolf. This is a first novel; I believe it is successful in that it makes me think about choices, honesty, marriage (even after twenty-nine years), and what happens next. What choices do I have left to make because my personal journey isn't over.
Did I get too far away from what you were talking about? I hope not, but if I did your letter caused me to think of something I had not thought of before. It's always good to see something new.
Sincerely,
Pat
Tanica's Letter