The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf-Her First Novel

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf (1915, 384 pages)

The Reading Life Virginia Woolf Project

I have  had Virginia Woolf (1882 to 1941-UK))  on my must read soon list for a very long time but it seems I kept getting sidetracked from reading her.    When I won a copy of The Waves from a very gracious blogger  (links to all my posts on Virginia Woolf can be found at The Reading Life Virginia Woolf Project link above) I decided this was my push to at last read one of her masterworks.   I had just completed Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End and this helped put me in a mind set for reading The Waves.     I really enjoyed  The Waves a lot.     I took the approach  of just letting the prose go over me in waves (lots of water images in the work) and did not stress over achieving what some would call an intellectualized understanding of the book.    I knew then I wanted to read a lot more Woolf.    I decided to first read Hermione Lee's wonderful biography Virginia Woolf  to expand my background knowledge.     By then I knew Woolf has four consensus masterworks,   The Waves, Orlando, Mrs Dalloway, and To the Lighthouse.    I decided to read the other three of these works next.    My thinking was that by doing this if I end up only reading four of her works I will have experienced her best novels and if I do go on to read all of them I could go back and reread the major ones.  I have now read the Woolf "big four".

I also decided to read some short fiction along the way.     In addition to this I read Flush,her biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, a really fun book and easy to follow.    I also read Jacob's Room.    I read her very famous A Room of One's Own, a few short stories and some essays.    

I am still pondering how to proceed on with Woolf.    I think for now the best course of action for me is to read her books in the order she wrote them.   That way I can see her develop as a writer.    

Woolf's very first novel, The Voyage Out, is not an experimental ground breaking work.     As the novel opens young Rachael Vinrace is embarking on a voyage to South America on a cruise ship owned by her father.   There is a nice mix of passengers on the ship so we are treated to some satire of the pretenses of the passengers.    On a cruise trip people tend to over  state their station in life and take the attitude that they will probably never see their fellow passengers again so there is little risk in being "found out" in an exaggeration.

The voyage is Rachael's first real taste of freedom.    Like Woolf herself she was raised in an intellectual family with a dominating father.    One can feel Rachael starting to come into her own as person as the cruise advances.  

It is not my plan to do much more than brief posts on Woolf's early works.   I will say that the South America that Rachael arrives at is unlike any part of South America that actually ever existed.    The logical ports of debarkation at the times were in Brazil or Columbia.     I would love to read Woolf's reaction  to Brazil in 1915 but this is not to be here.  

The best parts of The Voyage Out were,  to me, the conversations.    I not  know it for a fact but I think a lot, maybe most, of the readers of The Voyage Out are in a "doing Woolf" mode.    The Voyage Out is, leaving aside its historical interest, an interesting beautifully written book of its period.

   If someone asked me based on my experience so far what their first Woolf should be, I think I would suggest Flush.  From there  I would say dive into which ever of the "big four" that seems most interesting to you.

My next Woolf novel will be Night and Day, a story of the romantic and personal attachments of two women. (1919)

For those who have read The Voyage Out, do you think it would still be read or even in print if Woolf never wrote her four masterworks or never became a cultural icon?

Mel u