Diana - Woolf Ch 3 & 4

One concept jumped out at me continually in chapters three and four: “empty shelf.”

Referring to male authors:
“…the shelf where the histories stand…” (p. 42 – note the plural usage of ‘histories’ written by men.)
“I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf…” (p. 46)

Referring to books by or about women:
She speaks later of books about “the life of the average Elizabethan woman…, I thought, looking about the shelves for books that were not there…” (p. 45)
“But what I find deplorable, I continued, looking about the bookshelves again, is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century.” (p. 45)
“But for women, I thought, looking at the empty shelves, …” (p. 52)

I found it particularly interesting that Woolf speaks often about the shelf holding books authored by men and the shelves empty of books written by or about women. Through the subtle use of singular and plural, she emphasizes the overabundance of substantive books written by men and the dearth of any books authored by or about women.

As a side note, she states, “Currer Bell [aka Charlotte Brontë], George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man.” (p. 50) Since all three women died before Woolf was born, how did she know their purpose in assuming a masculine penname?