Virginia Woolf and the Professions

This book argues that Virginia Woolf used her writing to examine the professions and their significance in British society.

Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan (Author)

9781107070240, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 July 2014

256 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

'… Chan competently explores related issues of money, war, feminism, democracy and social class.' Kathy Chamberlain, Virginia Woolf Bulletin

This book explores Virginia Woolf's engagement with the professions in her life and writing. Woolf underscored the significance of the professions to society, such as the opportunity they provided for a decent income and the usefulness of professional accreditation. However, she also resisted their hierarchical structures and their role in creating an overspecialised and fragmented modernity, which prevented its members from leading whole, fulfilling lives. This book shows how Woolf's writing reshaped the professions so that they could better serve the individual and society, and argues that her search for alternatives to existing professional structures deeply influenced her literary methods and experimentation.

1. The ethics and aesthetics of medicine
2. Virginia Woolf, amateurism and the professionalisation of literature
3. Reconfiguring professionalism: Lily Briscoe and Miss La Trobe
4. Translating the fact of the professions into the fiction of vision: The Years and Three Guineas
5. A balancing act: Between the Acts and the aesthetics of specialisation.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], British & Irish history [HBJD1], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]