there was no subject in the world which she knew accurately. Her mind was in the state of an intelligent man’s in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; she would believe practically anything she was told. invent reasons for anything she said. The shape of the earth, the history of the world, how trains worked, or money was invested, what laws were in force, which people wanted what, and why they wanted it, the most elementary idea of a system in modern life—none of this had been imparted to her by any of her professors or mistresses

Chapter X. Rachel is reading modern literature and reflecting philosophically about the nature of life. She and Helen receive an invitation to Hewet’s expedition. The outing presents the radical young figure of Evelyn Murgatroyd, and Helen meets Terence Hewet, Instead we are presented with what Rachel Vinrace calls for during the events of the novel –“Why don’t people write about the things they do feel?” . Despite all the symbolism of a first journey away from home, a first love affair, and the dawning of mature consciousness which Rachel experiences, the bulk of the novel is taken up with what people say and think about each other. This was a bold alternative to the plot-driven novels of the late Victorian era. Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs. When I first started reading The Voyage Out, I was not sure I would like it. Initially, I had a bit of difficulty keeping the various characters and names straight in my head. I wasn’t sure about them- I didn’t know if I liked any of them. But, as the ship reached the shore and each character was drawn so meaningfully, I was hooked. Feminism and the constraints faced by women during this time, marriage, and the individuality of persons are all issues examined very thoroughly here. Each person, man or woman, has his or her own struggles to which we become privy. Evelyn, another tormented young woman, is distressed over multiple marriage proposals and the desire to remain independent. “I thought the other day on that mountain how I’d have liked to be one of those colonists, to cut down trees and make laws and all that, instead of fooling about with all these people who think one’s just a pretty young lady. Though I’m not. I really must do something.” Surely, Evelyn was one of many women to suffer due to the barriers placed on her gender. Women are not the only ones here that agonize over life choices, self-examination, and the pursuit of happiness. As Hewet realizes he has fallen in love with Rachel, he frequently broods over his ideas surrounding the institution of marriage. He draws various pictures in his mind of married couples sitting together in a firelit room. “These pictures were very unpleasant… He tried all sorts of pictures, taking them from the lives of friends of his, for he knew many different married couples…When, on the other hand, he began to think of unmarried people, he saw them active in an unlimited world; above all, standing on the same ground as the rest, without shelter or advantage. All the most individual and humane of his friends were bachelors and spinsters." A sure-fire way to set the ‘klaxons’ off on the popular BBC panel show QI – where panellists have to avoid giving the obvious-but-wrong answer to interesting questions – is to ask, ‘Which Virginia Woolf novel first featured Mrs Dalloway?’ Of course, the question already feels like a trap, and Alan Davies would be right to be wary. For Mrs Dalloway (1925), perhaps Virginia Woolf’s best-known novel, came ten years after Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out (1915). And it is in The Voyage Out that we first find Clarissa Dalloway, albeit in a slightly different form from her later, more introspective party-throwing incarnation.Chapter I. Ridley Ambrose and his wife Helen are leaving London to join their ship, the Euphrosyne which is due to take them on a cruise to South America. They join their niece, Rachel Vinrace, whose father owns the ship. A fellow traveller, Mr Pepper reminisces critically with Ambrose about their contemporaries at Cambridge. They are then joined by the captain Willoughby Vinrace. The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's first novel. Even then she has been quite obsessed with the "voyage" to find the true meaning and true path in life. In the story, her characters take on a physical voyage from their home in England to South America. While on this physical voyage out, interacting with one another, they also take on a voyage out into their inner selves, questioning, and re-questioning who they truly are. The physical and mental "voyages" complement and completes each other and produces one journey in search of self. Virginia's ability to strike this physical and mental balance in her very first work says a lot about her potential, which was fully developed later. Wuthering Heights! said Clarissa, 'Ah---that’s more in my line. I really couldn’t exist without the Brontës! Don’t you love them? Still, on the whole, I’d rather live without them than without Jane Austin.’

Chapter XVI. On their excursion Rachel and Hewet discuss the life of the typical unmarried middle-class girl (and its limitations) plus the issues raised by women’s suffrage. As he tells her about his literary ambitions she feels romantically attracted to him. He is excited yet dissatisfied by their intimacy and the tension between them.The novel begins in London, then moves via a very convincing storm at sea to Portugal, where the Dalloways join the ship. This part of the narrative is quite credible, and is possibly based on a journey at sea Virginia Woolf made to Portugal with her younger brother Adrian in 1905. But after the Dalloways are dropped off (almost parenthetically) in North Africa the location switches with virtually no transition to the fictitious Santa Marina. So let's just say that I have taken "The Voyage Out" on a journey of its own, exposed it to the society in which I live and breathe and read. And when it comes to characters, plots and settings, I find Virginia's universe still quite intact, despite our advanced technology. More than once, I thought of what she would have written about my contemporaries, who try to "open my mind to the modern world" in the same way the Dalloways and other socialites try to "open" the erudite Oxbridge minds of that time, who unfortunately do not know how o dress for dinner. Rose, Phyllis. Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Offers in one chapter on The Voyage Out a compelling discussion that focuses on Woolf’s use of character to explore social and philosophical issues.

These people all talk smartly, and one rather wonders what it is all about, for it does not seem to get anywhere in particular. Rachel has been kept by her father in ignorance of everything which might be presumed to injure the mind of a “young person.” Rachel Vinrace, Woolf’s first heroine, is a motherless young woman who, at twenty-four, embarks on a sea voyage with a party of other English folk to South America. Guileless, and with only a smattering of education, Rachel is taken under the wing of her aunt Helen, who desires to teach Rachel "how to live."Arriving in Santa Marina, a village on the South American coast, Rachel and Helen are introduced to a group of English expatriates. Among them is the young, sensitive Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer, with whom Rachel falls in love. But theirs is ultimately a tale of doomed love, set against a chorus of other stories and other points of view, as the narrative shifts focus between its central and peripheral characters. E. M. Forster praised The Voyage Out as "a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path." Both David Daiches ( Virginia Woolf, p. 14) and Hermione Lee ( Virginia Woolf, p. 50) argue that Rachel’s death is not sufficiently anticipated in the novel. But Alice van Buren Kelley is right to argue that in The Voyage Out, ‘Once the visionary aspect of death is revealed with Rachel’s actual dying, all earlier hints of tragedy take on a deeper significance’ (Alice van Buren Kelley, The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision (London: University of Chicago Press, 1973) p. 12).Rachel falls in love with a young Englishman, Terence, in Santa Marina. But tragically, she falls ill and dies. Yet, in the brief time that Helen and Terence have known her, her journey has also made them reflect about their own lives.