The Woolfs and Empire

Presenter

Arunendro Dutta

Campus

UMass Amherst

Sponsor

Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Department of English, UMass Amherst

Schedule

Session 2, 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM [Schedule by Time][Poster Grid for Time/Location]

Location

Poster Board C32, Poster Showcase Room (163), Row 4 (C31-C40) [Poster Location Map]

Abstract

This research focuses on comparing Leonard and Virginia Woolf's representations of empire and other colonial systems in their fiction, essays, and other writing. The primary texts for the start of the study are The Village in the Jungle and "Pearls and Swine" by Leonard Woolf, and The Voyage Out and Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf. Further reading includes other short essays from both Leonard and Virginia Woolf, as well as secondary academic sources, (e.g. "Bloomsbury and Empire" by Gretchen Gerzina). A key element of this study is a literary comparison of the representations of empire in these works. Additionally, in order to understand their perspectives on empire, some biographical work is required. Their differing familial ties to the British colonial project and experiences as adults are central to constructing the visions of empire in their work. Virginia Woolf's family was steeped in the Raj (like much of the rest of the Bloomsbury Group), and yet she personally never spent time on the frontlines of Empire. Leonard, on the other hand, had no ancestral hold in the colonies but was directly employed in the colonial service in early adulthood. This gap in experience accounts for many of the differences that emerge in a literary study of their work -- and so it becomes clear that to fully compare their written representations empire, one must examine both the literary and biographical differences between Virginia and Leonard Woolf.

Keywords

Modernist literature, Post-colonial literature, Bloomsbury Group, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf

Research Area

Literature

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