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    Monday or Tuesday
    Monday or Tuesday
    Monday or Tuesday
    Ebook73 pages1 hour

    Monday or Tuesday

    By Virginia Woolf

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A stylistically innovative volume of short stories from the groundbreaking author of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando.
     
    First presented as one volume in 1921, Monday or Tuesday was the only collection of stories Virginia Woolf published in her lifetime. Written in her experimental, stream-of-consciousness style, these eight unconventional stories eschew traditional plot and character development in favor of interior thoughts, emotions, memories, and associations.
     
    From a heron’s in-flight perceptions in “Monday or Tuesday” to a ghost couple searching for treasure in “A Haunted House,” from a meditation on color as a catalyst for imagination and emotional connections in “Blue and Green” to the invented stories of a narrator on a train observing a fellow passenger in “An Unwritten Novel,” Woolf’s poetic explorations take readers in directions previously unexamined, revealing an intensity of feeling and depth of insight that would continue to characterize her later work.
     
    Michael Cunningham, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Hours, has said of Woolf: “She was doing with language something like what Jimi Hendrix does with a guitar.” Taken together, these lyrical and evocative stories create a rich mosaic of the artist’s radically unique sensibility.
     
    Monday or Tuesday includes“A Haunted House,” “A Society,” “Monday or Tuesday,”
    “An Unwritten Novel,” “The String Quartet,” “Blue and Green,” “Kew Gardens,” and “The Mark on the Wall.”
     
    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateAug 15, 2017
    ISBN9781504047357
    Author

    Virginia Woolf

    VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

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    Reviews for Monday or Tuesday

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      This slim collection of early short stories by Virginia Woolf has a little bit of all her strengths crammed into one tiny volume. "Kew Gardens" is probably my favorite, but the poetry of "Blue & Green" and "Monday or Tuesday," the feminist commentary of "A Society," and the sly commentary of "An Unwritten Novel" are all pretty wonderful. Oh, and "A Haunted House" and "Mark on the Wall"! Who am I fooling, I loved all of them. Worth a dip for fans of literature, Virginia Woolf, or kick ass short (and super short) stories.
    • 4/5
      I have, admittedly, still a little bit of an undeniable adoration of Woolf's stream of consciousness (which was gained in an Upper Grad course focused solely on her and her major works). I loved the second story in this collection best.

      And I can't wait to work into a few of my next collections I picked up of
    • 4/5
      More so than the novels, Virginia Woolf's short stories are difficult to read. One reason for that, is that in the stories, particularly in this early collection titled Monday or Tuesday she was looking for a new form. Her writings take the form of an experiment. Another reason is that Woolf's view of the world is idiosyncratic. This makes that her writing has a very particular feel to it; Woolf's style is not easy to follow. A moment of inattention, and the reader may be lost, having to retrace steps and reread to catch the thread. Finally, in her work Woolf makes many references to people and events of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century; without knowing what she refers too, even in fiction, the stories are difficult to understand, or it is hard to see the significance. For example, in the story "A society" there is a reference to a publication in 1920 by the Edwardian author Arnold Bennett, who posed that women were intellectually inferior to men. However, the reference in the story is very vague, and it requires an annotated edition (such as the Selected short stories) or quite some research in the library to pick up such allusions.A short story collection such as Monday or Tuesday might be difficult to start reading Virginia Woolf, but for people who have already read some of the later novels, the collection is very rewarding. The collection is very typically Woolf, including all features of her style and themes.Highly recommended, but difficult to read, and therefore I would suggest to read an annotated edition such as in the Penguin Classics series, rather than a free download. An additional advantage is that the Penguin Classics edition reprints the woodcut illustrations by Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell.
    • 4/5
      I am strangely fascinated by Virginia Woolf, and that even though I have not read many of her works as yet.

      Like any collection of short stories some of the stories are more appealing than others, but all of them show Woolf's creative powers creating the minutest of observations and turning it into a journey of ideas.

      What I liked best about this collection of shorts - apart from the witty satire in A Society - was the rhythm of the language. It's almost like you could read the stories - at least parts of most of the stories - aloud to the beat of a metronome.
    • 4/5
      Woolf's great experiments defining modernist writing.

    Book preview

    Monday or Tuesday - Virginia Woolf

    A HAUNTED HOUSE

    Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.

    Here we left it, she said. And he added, Oh, but here too! It’s upstairs, she murmured. And in the garden, he whispered. Quietly, they said, or we shall wake them.

    But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain, one might say, and so read on a page or two. Now they’ve found it, one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. What did I come in here for? What did I want to find? My hands were empty. Perhaps it’s upstairs then? The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

    But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. Safe, safe, safe, the pulse of the house beat softly. The treasure buried; the room … the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

    A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. Safe, safe, safe, the pulse of the house beat gladly. The Treasure yours.

    The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.

    Here we slept, she says. And he adds, Kisses without number. Waking in the morning— Silver between the trees— Upstairs— In the garden— When summer came— In winter snowtime— The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

    Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. Look, he breathes. Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.

    Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

    Safe, safe, safe, the heart of the house beats proudly. Long years— he sighs. Again you found me. Here, she murmurs, sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure— Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. Safe! safe! safe! the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

    A SOCIETY

    This is how it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a milliner’s shop where the light still shone brightly upon scarlet feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in building little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men—how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were—how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed to get attached to one for life—when Poll, who had said nothing, burst into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on condition that she read all the books in the London Library. We comforted her as best we could; but we knew in our hearts how vain it was. For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her shoe laces untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one of them would ever wish to marry her. At last she dried her tears. For some time we could make nothing of what she said. Strange enough it

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