Virginia Woolf, Proust, and Orlando

Abstract

T HE QUESTION of Proust's influence on the novels of Virginia Woolf has been raised in passing by several of Virginia Woolf's critics, with varied findings. On one hand it has been briefly dismissed with the statement the French writer had no influence at all upon Virginia Woolf, who merely read as escape literature, in the sense he took her far from her own work.' This judgment appears somewhat arbitrary, however, in view of the fact Virginia Woolf herself told Roger Fry her reading of A la recherche du temips perdu inspired her to try to write that (that is, like Proust).2 On the other hand it has been claimed Proust . . . must have very greatly influenced her work ;3 but, as I shall show, the evidence so far adduced cannot be called convincing. Most critics, adopting a position somewhere between these extremes, point out thematic affinities between the two novelists' works-such as the relation of chronological time to the individual mind, the different selves coexist within a single person, androgyneity and the possibility of love between two members of the same sex, the perception of reality in a moment privilIgie or moment of vision and the importance of art in recreating perception-but suggest such affinities are probably due to a coincidental similarity of temperament, or to the prevailing climate of European thought in the early twentieth century.4 This last answer to the question of whether may have influenced Virginia Woolf