The Politics of Jacob's Room
Virginia Woolf Season 2024-25: Woolf and Politics
Lecture 9. The Politics of Jacob’s Room (1922)
Woolf’s Jacob’s Room can be read as a tomb to the unknown soldier, lamenting the deaths of all the young men who died in the First World War. In another sense, it is an excoriating political critique of the patriarchy that allowed and even caused those deaths. In one and the same breath Woolf is mourning and condemning men.
The success of this Janus-faced text is owed in large part to its narration by an unnamed woman of about thirty-five years old. By narrating Jacob from this individual perspective, Woolf places a veil of skepticism over the novel. This literary device forces the reader into a constant state of doubt about their reading, which—ingeniously—blocks the reader from emotionally connecting with Jacob. The most emotionally flat novel of Woolf’s oeuvre, Jacob remains, to the end, an unknown soldier.
At the same time Jacob embodies a budding example of the patriarchy, as he takes his first steps toward forming an identity for himself at Cambridge University. Jacob’s Room attacks the alluring appeal and certainties of the Church, University and State, as Jacob experiences them. Woolf uses the emotionally flat topography of the text to diffuse the ecstatic impact these institutions might otherwise arouse in the reader through their grand buildings, costumery, and props. They are reduced to objects of ridicule or play things: ‘Like blocks of tin soldiers the army covers the cornfield, moves up the hillside, stops, reels slightly this way and that, and falls flat.’ Such manufactured ecstasies lay exposed as false gold.
Having stripped the institutions of their charisma, Woolf then schools the reader to suspect their emotional manipulations. At the same time, Jacob’s Room offers Woolf a fascinating opportunity to think out the distinctions between state-manufactured ecstasy in opposition to her own ecstatic ‘moments of being’.
I will argue that, by dismantling the emotional allure of the politics that sent a generation of men to fight in the FWW, Woolf stages a radical ethical challenge: can you mourn Jacob, this unknown soldier? There were, after all, so many.
Live online lecture and seminar with Angela Harris.
Saturday 10 May 2025
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer 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 9. The Politics of Jacob’s Room (1922)
Woolf’s Jacob’s Room can be read as a tomb to the unknown soldier, lamenting the deaths of all the young men who died in the First World War. In another sense, it is an excoriating political critique of the patriarchy that allowed and even caused those deaths. In one and the same breath Woolf is mourning and condemning men.
The success of this Janus-faced text is owed in large part to its narration by an unnamed woman of about thirty-five years old. By narrating Jacob from this individual perspective, Woolf places a veil of skepticism over the novel. This literary device forces the reader into a constant state of doubt about their reading, which—ingeniously—blocks the reader from emotionally connecting with Jacob. The most emotionally flat novel of Woolf’s oeuvre, Jacob remains, to the end, an unknown soldier.
At the same time Jacob embodies a budding example of the patriarchy, as he takes his first steps toward forming an identity for himself at Cambridge University. Jacob’s Room attacks the alluring appeal and certainties of the Church, University and State, as Jacob experiences them. Woolf uses the emotionally flat topography of the text to diffuse the ecstatic impact these institutions might otherwise arouse in the reader through their grand buildings, costumery, and props. They are reduced to objects of ridicule or play things: ‘Like blocks of tin soldiers the army covers the cornfield, moves up the hillside, stops, reels slightly this way and that, and falls flat.’ Such manufactured ecstasies lay exposed as false gold.
Having stripped the institutions of their charisma, Woolf then schools the reader to suspect their emotional manipulations. At the same time, Jacob’s Room offers Woolf a fascinating opportunity to think out the distinctions between state-manufactured ecstasy in opposition to her own ecstatic ‘moments of being’.
I will argue that, by dismantling the emotional allure of the politics that sent a generation of men to fight in the FWW, Woolf stages a radical ethical challenge: can you mourn Jacob, this unknown soldier? There were, after all, so many.
Live online lecture and seminar with Angela Harris.
Saturday 10 May 2025
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer 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 9. The Politics of Jacob’s Room (1922)
Woolf’s Jacob’s Room can be read as a tomb to the unknown soldier, lamenting the deaths of all the young men who died in the First World War. In another sense, it is an excoriating political critique of the patriarchy that allowed and even caused those deaths. In one and the same breath Woolf is mourning and condemning men.
The success of this Janus-faced text is owed in large part to its narration by an unnamed woman of about thirty-five years old. By narrating Jacob from this individual perspective, Woolf places a veil of skepticism over the novel. This literary device forces the reader into a constant state of doubt about their reading, which—ingeniously—blocks the reader from emotionally connecting with Jacob. The most emotionally flat novel of Woolf’s oeuvre, Jacob remains, to the end, an unknown soldier.
At the same time Jacob embodies a budding example of the patriarchy, as he takes his first steps toward forming an identity for himself at Cambridge University. Jacob’s Room attacks the alluring appeal and certainties of the Church, University and State, as Jacob experiences them. Woolf uses the emotionally flat topography of the text to diffuse the ecstatic impact these institutions might otherwise arouse in the reader through their grand buildings, costumery, and props. They are reduced to objects of ridicule or play things: ‘Like blocks of tin soldiers the army covers the cornfield, moves up the hillside, stops, reels slightly this way and that, and falls flat.’ Such manufactured ecstasies lay exposed as false gold.
Having stripped the institutions of their charisma, Woolf then schools the reader to suspect their emotional manipulations. At the same time, Jacob’s Room offers Woolf a fascinating opportunity to think out the distinctions between state-manufactured ecstasy in opposition to her own ecstatic ‘moments of being’.
I will argue that, by dismantling the emotional allure of the politics that sent a generation of men to fight in the FWW, Woolf stages a radical ethical challenge: can you mourn Jacob, this unknown soldier? There were, after all, so many.
Live online lecture and seminar with Angela Harris.
Saturday 10 May 2025
18.00-20.00 British Summer Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Summer Time
Morning/lunchtime in the Americas
£32.00 full price
£27.00 students and CAMcard holders
£27.00 members of the VWSGB