MAR - Monday or Tuesday

March review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Woolf, 1921. [collection of stories written by a woman]

Virginia Woolf is my favorite. (Fun Fact--my derby name was almost "Virginia Hungry Like The Woolf." But that was too long.) I love when I can discover new things by my favorite authors in conjunction with these prompts, so I was thrilled to be able to read this collection of short stories by Woolf for one of this month's choices. Monday Or Tuesday is a collection of eight stories by Woolf that marks the beginnings of the now-signature Woolf style, published in 1921 before Jacob's Room (1922) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925). It illustrates her discovery of stream-of-consciousness writing and the fluidity of character, each story acting as a sort of example of a type of meandering that she is to explore further in later works. It is notable that this is the only collection of short stories that she published herself.

These eight stories are wonderfully arranged. I think that the way in which they are ordered is essential to mapping Woolf's striving for this new kind of description. The first story, "A Haunted House," spans barely two pages and is relatively straightforward in its traversal. It details a ghost couple moving through the space they once inhabited as living creatures, talking to each other as they observe and think and process. The last story, "The Mark on the Wall," is a fantastic first-person demonstration of stream-of-consciousness, allowing the reader to slip into this woman's sinuous thoughts. It is almost as if through the arrangement of these stories, Woolf is convincing herself of the validity of this new descriptive practice. I, for one, am on board.

Each of the eight stories contains something to delight in, but I think most apropos to me in my current mood is the "delightful, feminist put-down of the male intellect" in "A Society." A group of women were having tea one afternoon, when one of them breaks down because her father, in his will, said that she would not receive her inheritance until she read every book in the London Library (!) and she has discovered that many of them are very, very bad. This revelation causes the women to question everything they know about the fabric of their lives, leading them to create a society meant for asking questions, in order to find out what the world was like. They vowed not to bear another child unto this world until they had all received satisfactory answers from each corner of their investigation. What follows is a savage satire on male bluster and their running of the world. I think Virginia Woolf, if alive today, would be absolutely ruthless in light of current political nonsense, and this story gave me a little hope.

One review I read described this as "Woolf at her liquid best," and I wholeheartedly agree with that characterization. I loved being able to immerse myself in her liquid and not-yet-formed style, rereading paragraphs and reciting them aloud as the words struck me.