Essay Database

“Thought – to call it by a prouder name that it deserved – had let its line down in the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift and sink it, until – you know the little tug – the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, …

…of the book, the reader does, indeed, understand Woolf’s position. Through the conversational tone and the spontaneous pauses in thought so common to Woolf’s style, it is clear that the effects of working, “even in poverty and obscurity,” are “worth while” and necessary if women are to produce good work - work that will allow them to “set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it [is] impossible to sit still.”