Between the Acts (Paperback)

by Virginia Woolf (Author) "IT WAS A SUMMER'S NIGHT AND THEY WERE TALKING, in the big room with the windows open to the garden, about the cesspool..." (more)
Key Phrases: sister swallow, lily pool, sweet lavender, Miss La Trobe, Sir Spaniel, William Dodge (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Adeline Virginia Woolf (n?e Stephen; 25 January 1882 ? 28 March 1941) was an English novelist and essayist, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." (wiki)

?Also available from Download eBooks are the following Virginia Woolf books: Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse; Orlando; A Room of One's Own; The Years.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review
Here, in her last book, is Virginia Woolf at her most tenuous, elusive, unreal. The various terms which have been applied to her art seem all to apply - "evocative", "fragile", "unsubstantial", "eclectic". The scene and the compass of this book is a pageant in a small English village, alternating with the actors of the local pageant are the figures in a private pageant of spectators:- Giles, stockbroker, at odds with his wife, Mrs. Manress, hearty, blowsy woman of forty who assumes the role of child of nature; Giles' father, withered, dry, his sister a vague old lady, etc. There is no action, save in the pageant which is reproduced now in poetry, now in prose. The quality of the book lies in its nuance, its shadows, its reflections, its aestheticism. There is an ethereal, haunting, beauty, strangely distant. Sharply limited market. (Kirkus Reviews )

'Together these ten volumes make an attractive and reasonably priced (the volumes vary between L3.99 and L4.99) working edition of Virginia Woolf's best-known writing. One can only hope that their success will prompt World's Classics to add her other essays to the series in due course.' 

(Elisabeth Jay, Westminster College, Oxford )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (October 21, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015611870X
• ISBN-13: 978-0156118705
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #224,095 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A work of mature genius by a great writer, August 1, 2000

By A Customer

This under-appreciated work is slowly gaining the recognition it deserves from Woolf critics... but I would say that, since I wrote my dissertation on it! Woolf's fiction is never light reading, but Woolf lovers will here find a masterful synthesis of descriptive power, her exhaustive knowledge of English history and literature, her feminism, her passionate hatred of war and her conviction that only aesthetic experience can enable humanity to question the status quo and *perhaps* create a better world... interested readers might consider reading it alongside The Years, Three Guineas, Moments of Being, the last volumes of the diary, or such Woolf essays as "Thoughts on Peace During an Air Raid," as well as Shakespeare's Tempest. This slim novel speaks volumes; it is a work of mature genius by one of the 20th century's greatest writers.

5.0 out of 5 stars The summing up, October 2, 2002

By	A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

"Between the Acts" was the last novel Virginia Woolf wrote, and it appropriately feels like a swansong; a sorrowful farewell to a country on the eve of a war that very well might have spelled its devastation. While it uses the modernist experimentation that characterized "To the Lighthouse," it is very easy to follow, but still invites several rereadings to explore its depths more fully.

The novel takes place on a single day in June of 1939 at an English country manor called Pointz Hall, owned by the Olivers, a family with such sentimental ties to its ancestry that a watch that stopped a bullet on an ancient battlefield is deemed worthy of preservation and exhibition. Every year about this time, the Olivers allow their gardens to be used by the local villagers to put on a pageant for raising money for the church. This year, the pageant is supposed to be a series of tableaux celebrating England's history from Chaucerian times up to the present.

The Olivers themselves are tableaux of sorts, each a silent representation of some emotion separated from the others by a wall of miscommunication. Old Bartholomew Oliver and his sister, Lucy Swithin, both widowed, are now living together again with much the same hesitant relationship they had as children. Oliver's son Giles is a stockbroker who commutes to London and considers the pageant a nuisance he has no choice but to suffer. Isa, his discontented wife, feels she has to hide her poetry from him and contemplates an extramarital affair with a village farmer.

Attending the pageant is a garrulous woman named Mrs. Manresa, who is either having or pursuing an affair with Giles. She has brought with her a companion named William Dodge, whose effeminate sexual ambiguity is noticed with reprehension by Giles and with curiosity by Isa. The somewhat romantic interest Isa shows in Dodge implies that she knows Giles would be annoyed less by her infidelity than by his being cuckolded for a fop like Dodge.

The other principal character is not an Oliver at all, and this is Miss La Trobe, the harried writer and director of the pageant. At first, she appears to serve the mere purpose of comic diversion, as she frustrates herself over details that nobody in the audience notices anyway; however, when the pageant is over, a new aspect of her character is revealed, one that has made her an outcast among the village women. Nevertheless, she graciously accepts the role of a struggling, misunderstood woman artist, and in this sense, she echoes the character of Lily Briscoe in "To the Lighthouse," as does Isa with her repressed poetry.

At the end of the pageant, to celebrate the "present," Miss La Trobe has planned something special and startling: She has the players flash mirrors onto the audience as if to say, "Look what England has become. Shameful, isn't it?" Likewise, with this novel Woolf holds up a mirror to humanity, reflecting our unhappiness in her characters. It's not a cheerful notion, but it's a fitting one to sum up the career of a writer like Woolf, one of our greatest chroniclers of sadness.

10 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Summary and more..., January 10, 2000

By	Ben (Georgia) - See all my reviews

Virginia Stephen Woolf finished Between the Acts in 1941; however, she never revised the novel because of her suicide during the same year. Between the Acts takes place in a small town in England before she has entered World War II in 1939. The novel, which spans one day, is about the annual village pageant at which villagers present a play to the community and guests about the history of England. The action splits between the acts concerning England in the Elizabethan Age, the Age of Reason, the Victorian Age, the present day, and the intermissions between the acts. In Between the Acts, there are many characters that are involved in the immediate action of the novel. Bartholomew Oliver, a retired Indian Civil Service worker, lives in a medium sized home called Pointz Hall with his widowed sister, Mrs. Swithin, his son Giles Oliver, who is a stock broker, and Giles' wife, Isa Oliver. Isa and Giles have a son named George. Two characters show up at Pointz Hall and attend the pageant with the residents. One of these characters, Mrs. Manresa, who is the only non-British character, is very flirtatious with Giles throughout the book. Her companion, William Dodge, is a very poetic yet nervous character. A final major character who is behind the scenes for the entire novel is Ms. La Trobe, the director of the play. There are also some minor characters that are involved in the action of the novel. Mrs. Haines, the wife of a farmer, appears in the opening scene of the novel. Isa hires Mabel, who plays Reason in the play, to take care of George as his nurse. Lynn Jones, a member of the audience during the play, disagrees with a statement made by Badge, an actor in the play. A final minor character, who is an actor in the play, is Albert the Village Idiot. One theme in this novel is unity. Unity is shown through the acts as the come together to create the play. The group of main characters also expresses unity. Another theme, which is a dominant theme in Woolf's writings, is feminism. There are many feminist images and references in the play. The acts of the play are about the woman rulers of England and love stories. The personality of Virginia Woolf can be seen in Mrs. Swithin, Isa Oliver, and Ms. La Trobe. These two themes are both major themes in Woolf's writings. Between the Acts can be viewed as a conversation that moves from point to point throughout the novel. The novel seems choppy and moves around constantly. The narrator sometimes seems like a character in the novel at points where he or she appears almost involved in the action of the scene. This is a dominant trait in Woolf's literature. The novel is whole with no chapters or significant breaks in the action. Instead, the book seems like a play with many scenes divided by long spaces in between paragraphs. The novel is also a combination of poetry and prose. Many people say that this work is not complete because Woolf never revised the novel.