Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

Introduction
by Anna Burrells, Steve Ellis, Deborah Parsons, and Kathryn Simpson
Boundaries signal limits and extent. Th ey contain and confi ne, but they also abut and
adjoin. Boundaries demarcate and divide one thing from another, yet as borders
they are also the site of the betwixt and between, where opposites meet, and as frontiers
they point to the unknown beyond, promising exploration and discovery. Boundaries
can be closed or open, and focussed inwards or outwards. Virginia Woolf was fi xated by
thresholds—historical, social, spatial, ontological, epistemological, and artistic—and in her
writing constantly positioned herself at the site of the “in-between,” as Tara Surry notes in
her essay in this volume. “Now is life very solid, or very shifting?” she asked in her diary
in January 1929, “I am haunted by the two contradictions” (D3 218). For the 16 th Annual
International Conference on Virginia Woolf we invited speakers to explore the idea of Woolfi
an boundaries—to consider not only Woolf’s own transgressions and trespasses, but also
to explore Woolf’s work from perspectives “beyond the boundary” of her own positions and
attitudes, and indeed beyond a metropolitan-centred view. Th e response to this invitation
was impressive, as speakers crossed geographical boundaries and moved beyond established
interpretative parameters in rich and fertile ways, refusing the constraints of period, generic,
and methodological boundaries—as Woolf herself was persistently concerned to do—and
pushing the limits and extent of our own disciplinary taxonomies. Because of the constraints
of space we can only represent a fraction of the high quality papers submitted for this volume,
but we hope that those included will stir new thoughts and open further perspectives
and debate beyond the very literal boundaries of this Woolfi an text.
One of the most fascinating perspectives on Woolf’s writing and life was off ered by
Ruth Gruber, who wrote the fi rst PhD thesis on Woolf in 1931/2, and shared with the
conference her experience of working on her thesis and of meeting Virginia and Leonard
Woolf; of crossing the threshold of their home, and, in completing her thesis, crossing
another threshold and opening the door to Woolf scholarship. It was an immense privilege
to hear Ruth Gruber’s incredible story, some of which is included in her Foreword to this
collection, a fl avour of the hour-long talk that both fascinated and entertained the new
and established Woolf scholars of today. Suzanne Bellamy’s essay continues this work of
what she calls “textual archeology” in her discussion of the fi rst Australian MA thesis on
Woolf, written by Nuri Mass in 1941/2. At the beginning of an exciting project to edit
this thesis, Bellamy off ers insights into another important threshold moment in Woolf
scholarship, and to the prescience of this early critic, who with none of the biographical
material which has proved so valuable to subsequent criticism recognised the challenges
of exploring Woolf as a female and modernist writer.
Deploring absolutism, Woolf’s instinct was drawn to the transitional aspect of boundaries,
and to their fl uctuation, their permeability, and their transgression, but at the same
time she was immensely sympathetic to the human desire for defi nition and solidity, and
despite constantly seeking to move beyond the confi nes of the ego, intensely aware of its
fragility. “I am whirled down caverns, and fl ap like paper against endless corridors,” thinks
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