“The Journey, Not the Arrival, Matters” – Virginia Woolf and the Culture of Aging

Abstract

In her novels, particularly in Mrs Dalloway (1925) and The Years (1937), Virginia Woolf explores the complex formation of modern consciousness in relation to aging. In her literary texts, a multiplicity of perspectives produces a dynamic sense of reality, in which any notion of experience is shown to be deeply related to gender, class, sexuality and age. A sense of self emerges in communication with others, an exchange in which the life of the mind is solidly grounded in the body's life. Literary character is dissolved into a subject in process for whom questions of aging play a vital part. Alongside her literary texts, Woolf's diaries provide ample material for her reflections on the specifically gendered aspect of aging. In the diaries, Woolf continuously probes into territories of aging, testing out how tabooed topics like menopause, old age and death can be textualized.