- Title Pages
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Virginia Woolf Standard Abbreviations
- Considering Contemporaneity: Woolf and “the Maternal Generation”
- Who is My Contemporary? Woolf, Mansfield, and Their Servants
- “The World is My Country”: Emma Goldman among the Avant-Garde
- “Definite, Burly, and Industrious”: Virginia Woolf and Gwen Darwin Raverat
- “A Verbal Life on the Lips of the Living”: Virginia Woolf, Ellen Terry, and the Victorian Contemporary
- Twists of the Lily: Floral Ambivalence in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Georgia O’Keeffe
- Virginia Woolf and the Book Society Limited
- The Outsider as Editor: Three Guineas and the Feminist Periodical
- Woolf’s Imperialist Cousins: Missionary Vocations of Dorothea and Rosamond Stephen
- Mary Sheepshanks, Virginia Stephen, and Morley College: Learning to Teach, Learning to Write
- Picture this: Virginia Woolf in the British Good Housekeeping!? or Moving Picture This: Woolf’s London Essays and the Cinema
- “Quota Quickies Threaten Audience Intelligence Levels!”: The Power of the Screen in Virginia Woolf’s “The Cinema” and “Middlebrow” and Betty Miller’s Farewell Leicester Square
- Reconfiguring the Mermaid: H.D., Virginia Woolf, and the Radical Ethics of Writing as Marine Practice
- A Carnival of the Grotesque: Feminine Imperial Flânerie in Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting” and Una Marson’s “Little Brown Girl”
- Mad Women: Dance, Female Sexuality, and Surveillance in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Emily Holmes Coleman
- Shop My Closet: Virginia Woolf, Marianne Moore, and Fashion Contemporaries
- Virginia Woolf and Victoria Ocampo: A Brazilian Perspective
- Making Waves in Lonely Parallel: Evelyn Scott and Virginia Woolf
- Critical Characters in Search of an Author: Cornelia Sorabji and Virginia Woolf
- “In my mind I Saw my mother”: Virginia Woolf, Zitkala-Ša, and Autobiography
- “The Squeak of the Hinge”: Hinging and Swinging in Woolf and Mansfield
- “People Must Marry”: Queer Temporality in Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield
- The Weight of “Formal Obstructions” and Punctuation in Mrs. Dalloway and Pointed Roofs
- Advise and Reject: Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press, and a Forgotten Woman’s Voice
- Florence Melian Stawell and Virginia Woolf: Home-front Experience, The Price of Freedom, and Patriotism
- Intimations of Cosmic Indifference in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Olive Moore’s Spleen
- “Could I sue a dead person?”: Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf
- Splintered Sexualities in Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “A Love Match”
- Sexual Cryptographies and War in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day
- Memorial Tribute for Jane Marcus
- To Jane, Thank you. With Love,
- Tribute to Jane Marcus
- Notes on Contributors
- Conference Program
Considering Contemporaneity: Woolf and “the Maternal Generation”
Considering Contemporaneity: Woolf and “the Maternal Generation”
- Chapter:
- (p.2) Considering Contemporaneity: Woolf and “the Maternal Generation”
- Source:
- Virginia Woolf and Her Female Contemporaries
- Author(s):
Mary Jean Corbett
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
Building on Pierre Bourdieu’s suggestion that contests between generations structure the literary field, this essay looks closely at Virginia Woolf’s attitudes to her older female contemporaries during the early part of her career, when as a newcomer she adopted a primarily agonistic relation to them. Her repudiation of such writers as Alice Meynell and Vernon Lee helped her to secure her own exceptional status. Yet once Woolf had achieved that status, she was more able to recognize her own implication in the competitive and hierarchical structures that constitute the literary field. By juxtaposing her public and private comments on Meynell and Lee from earlier and later in her career, we can register her subsequent re-valuation of at least some of the work of “the maternal generation.” As Woolf herself aged into an older generation, that is, she revisited her earlier judgments in a new spirit.
Keywords: Pierre Bourdieu, Virginia Woolf, Alice Meynell, Vernon Lee, generations, literary field
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- Title Pages
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Virginia Woolf Standard Abbreviations
- Considering Contemporaneity: Woolf and “the Maternal Generation”
- Who is My Contemporary? Woolf, Mansfield, and Their Servants
- “The World is My Country”: Emma Goldman among the Avant-Garde
- “Definite, Burly, and Industrious”: Virginia Woolf and Gwen Darwin Raverat
- “A Verbal Life on the Lips of the Living”: Virginia Woolf, Ellen Terry, and the Victorian Contemporary
- Twists of the Lily: Floral Ambivalence in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Georgia O’Keeffe
- Virginia Woolf and the Book Society Limited
- The Outsider as Editor: Three Guineas and the Feminist Periodical
- Woolf’s Imperialist Cousins: Missionary Vocations of Dorothea and Rosamond Stephen
- Mary Sheepshanks, Virginia Stephen, and Morley College: Learning to Teach, Learning to Write
- Picture this: Virginia Woolf in the British Good Housekeeping!? or Moving Picture This: Woolf’s London Essays and the Cinema
- “Quota Quickies Threaten Audience Intelligence Levels!”: The Power of the Screen in Virginia Woolf’s “The Cinema” and “Middlebrow” and Betty Miller’s Farewell Leicester Square
- Reconfiguring the Mermaid: H.D., Virginia Woolf, and the Radical Ethics of Writing as Marine Practice
- A Carnival of the Grotesque: Feminine Imperial Flânerie in Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting” and Una Marson’s “Little Brown Girl”
- Mad Women: Dance, Female Sexuality, and Surveillance in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Emily Holmes Coleman
- Shop My Closet: Virginia Woolf, Marianne Moore, and Fashion Contemporaries
- Virginia Woolf and Victoria Ocampo: A Brazilian Perspective
- Making Waves in Lonely Parallel: Evelyn Scott and Virginia Woolf
- Critical Characters in Search of an Author: Cornelia Sorabji and Virginia Woolf
- “In my mind I Saw my mother”: Virginia Woolf, Zitkala-Ša, and Autobiography
- “The Squeak of the Hinge”: Hinging and Swinging in Woolf and Mansfield
- “People Must Marry”: Queer Temporality in Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield
- The Weight of “Formal Obstructions” and Punctuation in Mrs. Dalloway and Pointed Roofs
- Advise and Reject: Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press, and a Forgotten Woman’s Voice
- Florence Melian Stawell and Virginia Woolf: Home-front Experience, The Price of Freedom, and Patriotism
- Intimations of Cosmic Indifference in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Olive Moore’s Spleen
- “Could I sue a dead person?”: Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf
- Splintered Sexualities in Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “A Love Match”
- Sexual Cryptographies and War in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day
- Memorial Tribute for Jane Marcus
- To Jane, Thank you. With Love,
- Tribute to Jane Marcus
- Notes on Contributors
- Conference Program
