Merry Wanderer of the Night:
virginia woolf

The Death of the Moth is a short essay by Virginia Woolf, which I recently read for my nature writing class. It seems to be rather popular though, because I saw that it is also in Phillip Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay. The essay is a rumination on life and death, but we see it through a moth. In the beginning, the moth flies quickly, encompassing all the energy in the world to do his fancy acrobatics. But that energy can only go for so long, and eventually the moth must face death. Virginia watches, wanting to help him, but knows that it is inevitable. Death is much too strong. In the end she says, "Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange."

In nature, I feel like many of us have had this experience. We have seen an animal or insect die and we wish we could do something, but it is inevitable. Where I grew up there were several deer who were frequently hit by cars. You wish you could do something to make it stop, but there just anything you can do. And this is often how we see death of our friends and family. It's painful to watch it happen and it is a great reminder that we all must meet our ends. Do we want to help them live for them, or do we want to help them live so we can convince ourselves that we are stronger than death?

You can download a PDF of The Death of the Moth at the link, and I would really encourage you to read it because it is very short. It should only take you about five minutes to read it. If you do take the time to read it please come back with your thoughts. Some things to think about as you read the essay might be: What does the moth represent? How does Woolf's view of life and death change over the course of the essay, if it does? How does the essay make you feel about life and death?

I'd love to hear your responses! Also, I'm hosting a readalong of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, so check that out and if you enjoy this weekly post you might want to check out this week's children's book Thursday vlog about the Curious Garden.

The first English class I ever took was on Virginia Woolf. After one semester with her you would think I'd never want to see Woolf again, but I fell in love. I feel in love with Woolf and vowed to read everything she's ever written. It took me until this summer to really sit down with another Woolf novel and I decided on Orlando

because it was short and the premise sounded really interesting. At the beginning of the novel Orlando is a young man in Elizabethan England, but by the middle of the novel Orlando finds that he is a woman. This creates lots of interesting experiences and through the change we can see how the life experience of a man is so different from that of a woman. I really thought I was going to love this book, but I just didn't.

Ever other paragraph is complaints about publishing and writing and being a female writer. Woolf spends so much time talking about that it becomes a bit hard to follow what is going on, at least I found it difficult at times. I thought she would really explore gender roles more, but I felt the story was lacking on that exploration because Woolf kept talking about writing and how sad it is to be a writer. The back of my book even says it's "the longest and most charming love letter in literature" but also talks about "the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women." I kind of felt like the book wasn't sure what it wanted to be. I realize that female writers have struggled because of their gender and have been less respected but the two never really came to one solid point for me in this book. Normally I love Woolf's ramblings but this time it felt like a bit of a cheap way to fill the book.

It also just didn't really feel like Woolf to me. It's a bit of a time travel book, involving Queen Elizabeth, Constantinople, and finally ending in 1928. It's also more narrative than her other books, which is part of the problem I think. It was like she was trying to take a way of writing and force herself into it, but it just doesn't work. Overall though, I think I was just disappointed because it wasn't what I was expecting. I realize the genius of the idea and there really are some areas in the book that make you stop and explore a little bit in your own mind. By the end of the book though I just felt... bothered.

I give this book a B.

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Stephanie Barron's The White Garden

is a fictional attempt to understand what happened to Virginia Woolf during the three weeks after Leonard read her suicide note and she was actually found in the river. I normally get hung up on things like facts and how true to the story an author is staying, but I could not put this book down. When Jo Bellamy tells her grandfather, Jock, that she is going to Sissinghurst Castle to copy The White Garden for a client he says all the right things. After all, it's a dream job for any gardener. Before she leaves though she finds that Jock has hung himself. When she goes through some of the history of Sissinghurst she finds out that Jock worked at the very garden she is going to, for a woman name Vita Sackville-West.

She finds a manuscript and the only author she can think of is Virginia Woolf. She asks the head gardener if she can borrow it for 24 hours, but it ends up being much longer than that. She takes it to manuscript analyst Peter Llewellyn. Peter takes the journal, but after looking at the dates tells Jo that it cannot be a manuscript by Virginia Woolf because the journal starts the day after Woolf's suicide. After talking he admits that Woolf was actually not found for three weeks after her death. Peter takes the journal to his ex-wife, crazy and beautiful Margaux, who then runs off with the journal. Peter and Jo continue to try and unfold the story of Viriginia Woolf's suicide and Jock's role in it, all while dealing with chasing Margaux and their budding romance.

This is the second novel I have read by Stephanie Barron (the other was Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor) and I enjoyed it leaps and bounds over my first Barron novel. The plot kept me going but Jo Bellamy is a wonderful heroine. She struggles over her interest in the actual story of Virginia's life and her need to understand her grandfather's suicide. She is also willing to kick some balls along the way, especially her employer's. The novel is complete and total fiction, but I still respect Barron for the risks she takes with what might have happened during those three lost weeks. My only quibble with the novel is the portrait it paints of Leonard Woolf, although this is really more of a quibble I have in general with people who brand Leonard Woolf as a bad guy. He was greatly shadowed by Virginia's success and there are some theories about his hands in her suicide but anyway. That is a story for another day!

Pub. Date: September 2009

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Format: Paperback, 336 pp

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.