In The Voyage Out, one of Woolf's wittiest, socially satirical novels, Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship, and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a modern version of the mythic voyage. Lorna Sage's Introduction and Explanatory Notes offer guidance to thereader new to Woolf, and illuminate Woolf's presence, not identifiable in the heroine, but in the social satire, lyricism and patterning of consciousness in one woman's rite of passage.
The Voyage Out , by Virginia Woolf , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. We meet young, free-spirited Rachel Vinrace aboard her father's ship, the Euphrosyne , departing London for South America. Surrounded by a clutch of genteel companions--among them her aunt Helen, who judges Rachel to be "vacillating," "emotional," and "more than normally incompetent for her years"--Rachel displays a startling maturity when she finds her engagement to the writer Terence Hewet listing toward disaster. As she soon discovers, "tragedies come in the hungry hours." Published in 1915, The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf 's first novel, and it is written in a more traditional narrative style than the one she later perfected. But this maiden voyage predicts Woolf's future triumphs in its elegant delineation of the troubles plaguing modern life and its satire of the upper class. As Rachel's peculiar fellow passengers expand their minds with the ideas of Aristotle and Shelley, they meanwhile suffer from the societal ennui that education and sophistication cannot overcome. Filled with cutting insights about politics, literature, gender, and modern relationships, The Voyage Out is a finely perceived impression of the overriding confusion that immediately followed World War I. Pagan Harleman is a freelance writer and filmmaker living in New York City.
We meet young, free-spirited Rachel Vinrace aboard her father's ship, theEuphrosyne, departing London for South America. Surrounded by a clutch of genteel companionsamong them her aunt Helen, who judges Rachel to be "vacillating," "emotional," and "more than normally incompetent for her years"Rachel displays a startling maturity when she finds her engagement to the writer Terence Hewet listing toward disaster. As she soon discovers, "tragedies come in the hungry hours." Published in 1915,The Voyage OutisVirginia Woolf's first novel, and it is written in a more traditional narrative style than the one she later perfected. But this maiden voyage predicts Woolf's future triumphs in its elegant delineation of the troubles plaguing modern life and its satire of the upper class. As Rachel's peculiar fellow passengers expand their minds with the ideas of Aristotle and Shelley, they meanwhile suffer from the societal ennui that education and sophistication cannot overcome. Filled with cutting insights about politics, literature, gender, and modern relationships,The Voyage Outis a finely perceived impression of the overriding confusion that immediately followed World War I.
Woolf's first novel is a haunting book, full of light and shadow. It takes Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose and their niece, Rachel, on a sea voyage from London to a resort on the South american coast. "It is a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South americanca not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an americanca whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis" (E. M. Forster).
