Facing Life as We Have Known It: Virginia Woolf and the Women's Co-operative Guild.
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- Wood, Alice
- Source
- Literature & History. Autum2014, Vol. 23 Issue 2, p18-34. 17p.
- Subject
- *WOMEN
20TH century British history
- Language
- ISSN
- 0306-1973
This article explores Leonard and Virginia Woolf's early interactions with the Women's Co-operative Guild and supplies a contextualised analysis of Virginia Woolf's preface to Life as We Have Known It (1931). Written to introduce a volume of autobiographical sketches by Co-operative Guildswomen and published in a variant form in the Yale Review, this essay has generated conflicting debate in Woolf studies. In this article I argue that the essay fictionalises Virginia Woolf's relationship with the Guild, concealing her familiarity with Guild activities to better engage an anticipated middle-class readership and promote frank interrogation of class prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]