Education in The Years
Virginia Woolf Season 2024-25: Woolf and Politics
Lecture 6. Education in The Years (1937)
The Years is fascinated with education and its politics. Woolf read widely about educational reform of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and these ideas are woven throughout the novel.
For much of her writing life, Woolf was concerned with the role of educational institutions in the cultivation of democracy, in culture as well as in politics. For The Years, she drew upon educational debates of the time as well as historical sources. In 1880, the Education Act introduced compulsory elementary-level education, and Woolf explores the ways in which this Act affected class relations.
Woolf was keenly interested in dialect scholar Joseph Wright, who appears as the fictional Sam Robson in The Years. Woolf uses Wright to think about the question of educational inequalities and working-class education.
Woolf was also concerned with the question of gender and education. How were women to gain fair access to education – and what would that look like? Her depiction of education in The Years (and in its earlier version, The Pargiters) is informed by ideas of meritocratic educational reform in a period in which girls found it difficult to gain a foothold on the ladder of educational opportunity.
With Natasha Periyan, Institute of English Studies, London
Saturday 8 February 2025
18.00-20.00 British Time (GMT)
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Morning/lunchtime in the Americas
£32.00 full price
£27.00 students and CAMcard holders
£27.00 members of the VWSGB
Virginia Woolf Season 2024-25: Woolf and Politics
Lecture 6. Education in The Years (1937)
The Years is fascinated with education and its politics. Woolf read widely about educational reform of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and these ideas are woven throughout the novel.
For much of her writing life, Woolf was concerned with the role of educational institutions in the cultivation of democracy, in culture as well as in politics. For The Years, she drew upon educational debates of the time as well as historical sources. In 1880, the Education Act introduced compulsory elementary-level education, and Woolf explores the ways in which this Act affected class relations.
Woolf was keenly interested in dialect scholar Joseph Wright, who appears as the fictional Sam Robson in The Years. Woolf uses Wright to think about the question of educational inequalities and working-class education.
Woolf was also concerned with the question of gender and education. How were women to gain fair access to education – and what would that look like? Her depiction of education in The Years (and in its earlier version, The Pargiters) is informed by ideas of meritocratic educational reform in a period in which girls found it difficult to gain a foothold on the ladder of educational opportunity.
With Natasha Periyan, Institute of English Studies, London
Saturday 8 February 2025
18.00-20.00 British Time (GMT)
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Morning/lunchtime in the Americas
£32.00 full price
£27.00 students and CAMcard holders
£27.00 members of the VWSGB
Virginia Woolf Season 2024-25: Woolf and Politics
Lecture 6. Education in The Years (1937)
The Years is fascinated with education and its politics. Woolf read widely about educational reform of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and these ideas are woven throughout the novel.
For much of her writing life, Woolf was concerned with the role of educational institutions in the cultivation of democracy, in culture as well as in politics. For The Years, she drew upon educational debates of the time as well as historical sources. In 1880, the Education Act introduced compulsory elementary-level education, and Woolf explores the ways in which this Act affected class relations.
Woolf was keenly interested in dialect scholar Joseph Wright, who appears as the fictional Sam Robson in The Years. Woolf uses Wright to think about the question of educational inequalities and working-class education.
Woolf was also concerned with the question of gender and education. How were women to gain fair access to education – and what would that look like? Her depiction of education in The Years (and in its earlier version, The Pargiters) is informed by ideas of meritocratic educational reform in a period in which girls found it difficult to gain a foothold on the ladder of educational opportunity.
With Natasha Periyan, Institute of English Studies, London
Saturday 8 February 2025
18.00-20.00 British Time (GMT)
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Morning/lunchtime in the Americas
£32.00 full price
£27.00 students and CAMcard holders
£27.00 members of the VWSGB