Chapter X
1 (p. 110) When he had found this beauty or this cause, no force, she knew, would avail to restrain him from pursuit of it. She suspected the East: Perhaps Woolf is referring obliquely to her husband, Leonard, who spent seven years in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with the Colonial Service.
2 (p. 114) was in the process of turning him from Tory to Radical: That is, she was making him more liberal; Tories were supporters of the Conservative Party, and Radicals were left-wing followers of the Liberal Party (which was losing support to the newly emerging Labour Party).
3 (p. 114) “It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering—the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself at all”: Katharine is recalling lines from The Idiot (1868-1869), a novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky.
4 (p. 115) “Don’t you think Mr Asquith deserves to be hanged?” . . . with respect to the Women’s Suffrage Bill: Herbert Henry Asquith, the Liberal prime minister from 1908 to 1916, strongly opposed women’s suffrage; in 1918, bending to political pressure, he reluctantly voted in support of the enfranchisement reform bill, which gave the right to vote to women over the age of thirty.
Chapter XI
1 (p. 123) “Sylvano enters, accompanied by the rest of the gentlemen of Gratian’s court”: Gratian was an emperor (A.D. 367-383) of the late Roman Empire, though William’s play sounds more like a Renaissance pastoral romance.
2 (p. 124) fell into a dream state, ... there dwelt the realities of the appearances which figure in our world; ... the beauty seen here in flying glimpses only: Katharine’s dreams, here and elsewhere, recall Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C. ) and his theory of Forms, which holds that the phenomena of this world offer mere hints of their ideal versions, and that reality exists only in the world of Forms, or Ideas.
Chapter XII
1 (p. 130) “I come from Woking, . . . because of the sunsets.... Where are the sunsets now? Alas! There is no sunset now nearer than the South Coast”: Woking is a town in southwestern Surrey, south of London. Mrs. Cosham implies that, although she moved there for its scenic vistas, the suburbs are now so built up that it has become impossible to view the sunset there.
2 (p. 133) Alfred Tennyson . . . “The Princess”: “The Princess” (1847), a long narrative poem by Tennyson, calls for the education of women and features a women’s college from which men are excluded.
3 (p. 133) “We want some one to show us what a good man can be. We have Laura and Beatrice, Antigone and Cordelia”: Mrs. Cosham is referring to Laura, the inspiration for Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374); Beatrice Portinari, muse of Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321); Antigone, titular heroine of the tragedy by Greek dramatist Sophocles (c.496-406 B.C.); and Cordelia, the youngest daughter of King Lear in the tragedy by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
4 (p. 134) “Pendennis—Warrington—I could never forgive Laura . . . for not marrying George. . . . George Eliot did the very same thing”: In Thackeray’s novel The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Laura Bell marries the hero, Arthur Pendennis, rather than his friend George Warrington—a questionable choice that Mrs. Cosham compares to English novelist George Eliot’s taste in men. The liaison between Eliot (1819-1880) and English philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes (1817-1878) lasted more than twenty years, though the married Lewes was unable to divorce his wife.
5 (p. 135) “There was a pond with tadpoles.... Millais made studies of it for ‘Ophelia’”: English painter John Everett Millais (1829-1896) is perhaps best known for this work, which hangs in London’s Tate Gallery and was inspired by the drowning of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet.
6 (p. 136) “To be imprison’d . . . pendant world”: In this passage from Measure for Measure (act 3, scene 1), Claudio describes his horror of death to his sister Isabella.
Chapter XVIII
1 (p. 203) “I’m wandering about Lincoln looking for the ruins”: The city of Lincoln in eastern England is the site of the ancient Roman town Lindum Colonia. Mrs. Hilbery is searching for Newport Arch, the north gate of Lindum, which probably dates from the early second century.
2 (p. 207) a lonely spot marked by an obelisk of granite: Woolf may be suggesting the Dunston pillar, which stands about 8 miles to the south-east of Lincoln; built in 1751 by Sir Francis Dashwood (founder of a secret society known as the “Mad Monks of Medmenham”), it served as an “inland lighthouse” to guide travelers over the heath.
3 (p. 213) they were like the children in the fairy tale who were lost in a wood, and with this in her mind she noticed the scattering of dead leaves all round them: In the English fairy tale “Babes in the Wood,” abandoned children perish in the woods and are covered with leaves by Robin Redbreast.
Chapter XX
1 (p. 227) “To know the truth—to accept without bitterness” . . . the statue of Francis, Duke of Bedford: Whig politician Francis Russell, fifth duke of Bedford (1765-1802), was a noted stockbreeder. His statue stands in Russell Square, Mary’s workplace, and shows him with a plough and sheep. The passage Mary quotes is inscribed on the statue’s base.
Chapter XXI
1 (p. 236) one could have a life of one’s own: This passage anticipates Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929), in which she argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
