English Commentary: “An Unwritten Novel”
Virginia Woolf was an impressionist writer who liked to pass on emotions to her
readers through her writing. Among the collection of short-stories, called a haunted house,
which gathers Virginia Woolf’s short-stories, there is “An Unwritten Novel”. In this story, we
follow a narrator (we don’t know his gender, but we can think it’s a woman), who’s travelling
in a train. She is sitting with five other people and seems particularly interested in a woman
who is just looking at the window. She sees her as a sad woman who tries to escape from
something. Then the narrator starts to imagine a life for this woman, who she called
“Minnie”. She imagines a sister-in-law she dislikes: Hilda; the death of her younger brother
and even a love story with a man called James Moggridge. But in the end, the narrator
realizes that she was wrong and that Minnie was just an ordinary woman and mother.
The story takes place in an ordinary world, and that’s why the narrator creates a
fictional and original life for Minnie. Moreover, Virginia Woolf makes us discover the world
of a writer. And that’s the reason why we are going to see that the short-story “An unwritten
novel” mixes different literary genres. But this story also shows us the pleasure to create
that a writer feels through the narrator.
First of all, there’s a contrast between the worlds which the narrator lives in and the
one he creates for Minnie which is fictional and seems more original. The real world is seen
as common and boring. For example, at the beginning, the narrator describes the
passengers’ occupations, from line 10 to 13: “One smokes; another reads; a third checks
4
entries in a pocket-book; a fourth stare at the map of the line framed opposite; and the fifth
– the terrible thing about the fifth is that she does nothing at all”. Even the landscape looks
ordinary, with real places like (line 40) “Surrey” our “Sussex”, or the cow which Minnie
notices (line 58) “Oh, that cow!” Topics of conversation are also common (lines 49 and 50):
“talked of stations, holidays, of brothers at Eastbourne”. The world where the two
characters live in seems boring. It can be the reason why the narrator decided to create an
unordinary life for Minnie.
The narrator seems really curious about Minnie. She inspires her. For instance, to her,
Minnie is hiding a burden which is symbolized by a tic that Minnie has many times, as we can
see from line 60 to 62: “she shuddered, and then she made the awkward angular movement
that I had seen before, as if, after the spasm, some spot between the shoulders burnt or
itched”. Minnie can be compared to Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth.
For instance, the two characters feel guilty. Indeed, Lady Macbeth asked her husband to kill
the king. And both of them have a tic: Lady Macbeth always rubs her hands. Besides, Minnie
also tries to rub a spot on a window, lines 68-69:”she rubbed as if she would rub something
out for ever – some stain, some indelible contamination”. Finally, the two characters are
prisoners of their destiny. They can’t go back to the past. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth says
“What’s done cannot be undone”, which can be paralleled with Minnie's words lines 148149: “’Yes, she seems to nod me, ‘it’s the thing I did’”. So, the narrator creates her own Lady
Macbeth. This comparison with Lady Macbeth, who’s characterised by her pathetic aspect,
brings a dramatic dimension to the short-story. Nevertheless, we’re going to see that an
unwritten novel plays with other literary genres.
4
Effectively, this short story is composed of many literary genres. For example, the
story is full of dramatic or tragic connotations. As we can see, from the beginning of the
story, Minnie is seen as (l.48) “an unhappy woman”. This expression is repeated three times
at lines 63, 13 and 109, which increases the pathetic aspect of this character. She even uses
a hyperbole at line 63 when she says “she looked the most unhappy woman in the world”.
Besides, the narrator tries to guess why Minnie is looking at the window: at this moment she
imagines Minnie’s life. As a matter of fact, the narrator creates a pious character who always
goes to church as can be seen lines 159 and 160: “she kneels; every day, winter, summer,
dusk, dawn (here she’s at it) prays”. But, these prayers seem to hide something; Minnie
looks guilty of something. So, the narrator goes on and begins a narration from line 144 to
lines 146, where she describes Minnie’s crime: “She runs, she rushes, home she reaches, but
too late. Neighbours – the doctor – baby brother – the kettle – scalded – hospital – dead – or
only the shock of it, the blame? [...] It’s what she carries with her”. This passage brings a
melodramatic atmosphere to the story. The broken rhythm and the present tense used in
this passage emphasize this idea. There’s even a tragic aspect with the death of Minnie’s
brother. Nevertheless, this sequence of actions can also be seen as a parody of the
melodramatic genre, which transforms the story into a comic one.
Indeed, Virginia Woolf includes some comic points in her story. We can see this with
the quick rhythm made by the paratactic sentence full of monosyllabic words, from line 144
to 146. Here, the author neither uses coordination, nor conjunctions, which seems
exaggerated and it’s the reason why it looks like a parody of the melodramatic genre.
Moreover, there’s also a criticism of the Edwardians' style, which was based on realism;
Virginia Woolf was an impressionist writer. She believes in emotions that readers can feel
and not “see” through their reading. For instance, from line 95 to 97, the narrator decides to
4
skip the description of the room: “But this we’ll skip; ornaments, curtains, trefoil china plate,
yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of biscuit...”There’s an effect of close up: from big
objects to little piece of food. Here, we can think that Virginia Woolf chooses common items
on purpose. She wants to show that a detailed description of everything has no sense and is
most of the time useless. She does the same with the description of Moggridge’s interior
body lines 267 to 272: “The enormous stability of the fabric; the spine tough as whalebone,
straight as oak-tree; [...] while from above meat falls in brown cubes and beer gushes to be
churned to blood again – and so we reach the eyes”.
This scene can be qualified as burlesque because it reminds us of passages from the
book Gargantua, written by Rabelais, where many dirty meals are described to make readers
laugh. Indeed, the narrator uses an internal point of view to increase the feeling of disgust,
which brings readers to see Moggridge as a dirty man as well.
At the end of the story, the narrator realises that all she imagines about Minnie was
wrong, because she finally sees Minnie with her son and she looks happy, as shows the
quotation lines 365 and 366:”Off they go, down the road, side by side”. This contrast can
create humour because the readers discover that the narrator was mistaken from the
beginning. In this short-story, Virginia Woolf presents her narrator as a kind of writer and
tries to share the experience of writing with her readers.
Through the whole story, the narrator makes us feel what a writer’s creating
experience is like. First, she needs to find inspiration. In this short-story, the narrator starts
using a play on looks to find it. Indeed, the narrator is first an observer. From the beginning,
the lexical field of “sight” is present. For example line 3 there’s the verb “look”, or line 11
4
“stare”. The narrator observes Minnie’s every movement as we can see line 15 “As if she
heard me, she looked up, shifted slightly in her seat and sighed”. Even at this moment, the
narrator imagines things. It’s the beginning of the process. But the writer also needs to feel,
and it’s the reason why she also describes the way Minnie looks at her. We can quote line 36
“She pierced through my shield”. So the first exchanges made between the two women are
made by looks. After that, she interprets Minnie’s actions and sets up a story.
The story is based on Minnie’s fictitious life. Indeed, the narrator seems to enjoy
creating this history. She asks many questions to herself, for instance line 85, where she’s
looking for a name for the sister-in-law “Hilda’s the sister-in-law. Hilda? Hilda? Hilda Marsh”.
Or even line 130 when she makes a break with the narration and talks to herself: “I have my
choices of crimes [...] A parting, was it, twenty years ago? Vows broken? Not Minnie’s...” The
narrator uses colloquial style which brings the readers to share the same feelings, for
example line 253 when she says “for God’s sake let me have one woman with a name I like!”
Even if she was wrong, the narrator doesn’t seem to be upset. On the contrary, she seems
excited. In fact, this new vision of “Minnie” inspired her for a new story. We can see this with
the accumulation of questions she asked, lines 371 to 373: “Mysterious figures! Mother and
son. Who are you? Why do you walk down the street? Where tonight will you sleep, and
then, tomorrow?” In the last sentences, the narrator expresses her love of life and especially
writing, through a poetic passage. She draws a metaphor of nature and life. The “sea” (378)
is a symbol of life. So, a writer can symbolize someone who gives life to his characters.
4
An Unwritten Novel is a short-story with two worlds which allows readers to discover
writers and different literary genres. Indeed, this short-story gathers two kinds of genres:
the dramatic and the comic.
We can compare this short-story with another one that Virgina Woolf wrote after an
unwritten novel, which is called Slater’s pins have no point. As a matter of fact, this story
also plays with an internal point of view: Fanny’s as she imagines her teacher’s life after the
latter one said “Slater’s pins have no points – don’t you always find that?”. In both stories, a
character realizes her interpretation of reality was wrong .
4