Monday or Tuesday

By Virginia Woolf

One of the most distinguished critics and innovative authors of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf published two novels before this collection appeared in 1921. However, it was these early stories that first earned her a reputation as a writer with "the liveliest imagination and most delicate style of her time." Influenced by Joyce, Proust, and the theories of William James, Bergson, and Freud, she strove to write a new fiction that emphasized the continuous flow of consciousness, time's passage as both a series of sequential moments and a longer flow of years and centuries, and the essential indefinability of character.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jovian Press
• Release date: Dec 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781537809052

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English novelist. Born in London, she was raised in a family of eight children by Julia Prinsep Jackson, a model and philanthropist, and Leslie Stephen, a writer and critic. Homeschooled alongside her sisters, including famed painter Vanessa Bell, Woolf was introduced to classic literature at an early age. Following the death of her mother in 1895, Woolf suffered her first mental breakdown. Two years later, she enrolled at King’s College London, where she studied history and classics and encountered leaders of the burgeoning women’s rights movement. Another mental breakdown accompanied her father’s death in 1904, after which she moved with her Cambridge-educated brothers to Bloomsbury, a bohemian district on London’s West End. There, she became a member of the influential Bloomsbury Group, a gathering of leading artists and intellectuals including Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Vanessa Bell, E.M. Forster, and Leonard Woolf, whom she would marry in 1912. Together they founded the Hogarth Press, which would publish most of Woolf’s work. Recognized as a central figure of literary modernism, Woolf was a gifted practitioner of experimental fiction, employing the stream of consciousness technique and mastering the use of free indirect discourse, a form of third person narration which allows the reader to enter the minds of her characters. Woolf, who produced such masterpieces as Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), and A Room of One’s Own (1929), continued to suffer from depression throughout her life. Following the German Blitz on her native London, Woolf, a lifelong pacifist, died by suicide in 1941. Her career cut cruelly short, she left a legacy and a body of work unmatched by any English novelist of her day.

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MONDAY OR TUESDAY

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Virginia Woolf

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Virginia Woolf

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A HAUNTED HOUSE

A SOCIETY

MONDAY OR TUESDAY

AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL

THE STRING QUARTET

BLUE & GREEN

KEW GARDENS

THE MARK ON THE WALL

A HAUNTED HOUSE

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WHATEVER HOUR YOU WOKE THERE was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.

Here we left it, she said. And he added, Oh, but here too! It’s upstairs, she murmured. And in the garden, he whispered. Quietly, they said, or we shall wake them.

But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain, one might say, and so read on a page or two. Now they’ve found it, one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. What did I come in here for? What did I want to find? My hands were empty. Perhaps it’s upstairs then? The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. Safe, safe, safe, the pulse of the house beat softly. The treasure buried; the room ... the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. Safe, safe, safe, the pulse of the house beat gladly. The Treasure yours.

The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.

Here we slept, she says. And he adds, Kisses without number. Waking in the morning— Silver between the trees— Upstairs— In the garden— When summer came— In winter snowtime— The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. Look, he breathes. Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.

Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

Safe, safe, safe, the heart of the house beats proudly. Long years— he sighs. Again you found me. Here, she murmurs, sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure— Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. Safe! safe! safe! the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

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A SOCIETY

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THIS IS HOW IT ALL came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a milliner’s shop where the light still shone brightly upon scarlet feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in building little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men—how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were—how we envied

Reviews for Monday or Tuesday

[brokentune · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am strangely fascinated by Virginia Woolf, and that even though I have not read many of her works as yet.

Like any collection of short stories some of the stories are more appealing than others, but all of them show Woolf's creative powers creating the minutest of observations and turning it into a journey of ideas.

What I liked best about this collection of shorts - apart from the witty satire in A Society - was the rhythm of the language. It's almost like you could read the stories - at least parts of most of the stories - aloud to the beat of a metronome.

[kristykay22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This slim collection of early short stories by Virginia Woolf has a little bit of all her strengths crammed into one tiny volume. "Kew Gardens" is probably my favorite, but the poetry of "Blue & Green" and "Monday or Tuesday," the feminist commentary of "A Society," and the sly commentary of "An Unwritten Novel" are all pretty wonderful. Oh, and "A Haunted House" and "Mark on the Wall"! Who am I fooling, I loved all of them. Worth a dip for fans of literature, Virginia Woolf, or kick ass short (and super short) stories.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

More so than the novels, Virginia Woolf's short stories are difficult to read. One reason for that, is that in the stories, particularly in this early collection titled Monday or Tuesday she was looking for a new form. Her writings take the form of an experiment. Another reason is that Woolf's view of the world is idiosyncratic. This makes that her writing has a very particular feel to it; Woolf's style is not easy to follow. A moment of inattention, and the reader may be lost, having to retrace steps and reread to catch the thread. Finally, in her work Woolf makes many references to people and events of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century; without knowing what she refers too, even in fiction, the stories are difficult to understand, or it is hard to see the significance. For example, in the story "A society" there is a reference to a publication in 1920 by the Edwardian author Arnold Bennett, who posed that women were intellectually inferior to men. However, the reference in the story is very vague, and it requires an annotated edition (such as the Selected short stories) or quite some research in the library to pick up such allusions.A short story collection such as Monday or Tuesday might be difficult to start reading Virginia Woolf, but for people who have already read some of the later novels, the collection is very rewarding. The collection is very typically Woolf, including all features of her style and themes.Highly recommended, but difficult to read, and therefore I would suggest to read an annotated edition such as in the Penguin Classics series, rather than a free download. An additional advantage is that the Penguin Classics edition reprints the woodcut illustrations by Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell.

[wanderlustlover_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have, admittedly, still a little bit of an undeniable adoration of Woolf's stream of consciousness (which was gained in an Upper Grad course focused solely on her and her major works). I loved the second story in this collection best.

And I can't wait to work into a few of my next collections I picked up of