Woolf's The Years

The Years / Virginia Woolf
London: Penguin Modern Classics, 1974, c1937.
349 p.

I was on a bit of a Virginia Woolf reading blitz at the end of 2019. This is another I finished recently, and I really liked it. It's the story of the Pargiter family over 3 generations, although the middle generation is the one that most comes to life for me. Their stories range from the 1880s to the "current day" of the 1930s, but they don't move completely chronologically -- this is Virginia Woolf after all!

The characters live within a whole family structure; their thoughts refer back to earlier family members and experiences in the same moment that they are immersed in daily life, in the way that we experience real life. The plot is negligible; this is really about a glimpse into everyday life over fifty years, and the way it plays out in this particular family. There is discussion of longings and barriers to happiness; love, relationships, marriages; friends, enemies, family; work, domesticity, struggle -- just about every small thing that looms large in a life. Some of the larger questions are only tangentially discussed, sexual ones in particular, and women's roles in the home and the world are part of the whole picture.

This was her last novel, and was intended to be a longer and deeper one but she reworked and reworked, so that some people feel this isn't a good novel. I disagree; I liked it, liked the glimpses into family dynamics and thoughts and feelings and impressions. It's a series of perceptions shared -- but then I like this sort of thing. 

Colonel Pargiter is a brusque man; he has 7 children and a sickly wife. His wife dies early in the novel, and his seven children go on to be the main focus of the novel. Some fade away and are only mentioned now and again, but the elder sisters become the crux of the stories. 

I enjoyed the imagery, and the way that Woolf ties the vagaries of human chronology and memory to the fixed, set timeline that comes from the seasons and the natural world. She describes the weather and atmosphere each time the book jumps to a new section (always headed by the year). And the finale is a large family party with all characters in evidence -- the aged Edwardian aunts, uncles and parents and the slick, busy younger generation who are getting tired of hearing the same old stories. 

I felt a bit overwhelmed by the final scenes at this party. It did feel a bit crowded and confusing; just like being there! And the way they are all tired and contentious but still won't go home til dawn...tiring just reading about it. But as a whole, I found this one beautiful and structurally interesting. So many lovely phrases and images, and a lovely way to examine existence and time. It's a shorter version of the experiment Proust was trying out in his giant A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, even set around the same time, though in this case, Woolf was looking more at a middle class family than the counts and dukes and so forth who fascinated Proust. 

As a meditation on time passing, and the experience of aging and thus feeling like you are out of your own time, I think this is a compelling success. And as usual, London comes to life as a setting that is almost its own character. I enjoyed this one and was able to both follow the ideas and recall characters easily; I liked it more than To The Lighthouse. 

Still hoping to finish a few more of Woolf's books this year, so I'll be able to judge my reactions to her books in the context of her oeuvre.