Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

‘“We have other lives, I think, I hope …” I am quoting, some of you will know, from Virginia’s last novel, Between the Acts . A short, generous-spirited book that reinvents art as something for everyone, for villagers and landowners, for rich and poor. You have these divisions in Turkey too: between those with an education, like you, and your contemporaries who could not afford it; between the city and the village. Art, Woolf says, can be a village pageant. Where even the audience play their part. As you do now, my audience.’ I found Virginia, I smiled at her. ‘Art, she says, unites us all. All of us need to play, or sing.’

I could not make out if she was smiling back. The sunlight had washed out her face again. Suddenly I could not see her at all. (But then, I was walking around the stage; obviously she must be behind a pillar; or else it was problems with my contact lenses.)

‘Most of you here are younger than me,’ I said. ‘Your country’s population is young. I want to come back to something I began with, something important to you young people. Sex and gender in Virginia Woolf — ’ (As I said it, I thought about my Virginia, the day before, when we’d fled the demonstration and sat in the café near Istiklal. She’d tried so bravely to talk about sex, and I had been deaf, and fobbed her off. You fool, you thought she was too old for it .)

‘ — which is important to us older people as well,’ I added, in time to raise a few wry smiles from the lecturers in the front row. ‘Virginia Woolf came to Istanbul — Constantinople — as I said. She was twenty-four: young and inexperienced. She found a city of domes and minarets, yes, but also free women on the streets, some of them veiled but taking their veils lightly, throwing them back to look in the shops, not what she had expected to find. She found a people who did not envy or copy the people of London or Paris, people who were happy in their own existence.

‘By the time she wrote Orlando , in 1928, nearly everything here was different. The First World War had changed the maps, and in Turkey Atatürk had come to power and was dragging Turkey into the future. But because Orlando is set in the past, Woolf was free to work from her memories.

‘What did she imagine? A place of transformation; a place where anything could happen. There are Gypsies; there are secret assignations; you can sleep for days without being woken; you can escape from the city into the wilds. Finally, you can change, if you want, if you dream the right dream, from a man to a woman. Her hero goes to bed a man: three days later, he wakes up a woman.

‘She imagines a city without fixity. Unlike New York, where Woolf never went, it is not a city of right angles and rectitude, a city with a rigid matrix. Orlando’s city is all being and becoming, not one where categories fix us in the past. It is not orthodox, or puritanical. Long may your city remain free, and fluid.

‘We know that Orlando was dedicated to Vita Sackville-West, Woolf’s lesbian lover. Yet we know how much Virginia loved her husband. It’s a book that says: we can be male or female. We can find the male and female in ourselves. We can have lovers of either sex. Heroes can be men or women. Writers can be women or men; they can be happy as either, and happy with either.’

(There was a shuffling going on in the front two rows. Oh, it was Moira, she had shouted something, she was waving her hand, obviously indignant. I had touched on a nerve, I managed to ignore her but part of me heard it, all the same: ‘Literature’s not about happiness!’)

‘I admire this novel greatly,’ I continued, ‘and yet, I still don’t think it is her greatest achievement.’

‘Remember she was born to privilege. Her father, Leslie Stephen, editor of the Dictionary of National Biography , was one of the best-known public intellectuals of his day. She grew up doing no domestic work, in a house that was run by servants. Yet somehow, in A Room of One’s Own , she steps completely outside herself; outside her class, outside her time. For me, the end of A Room of One’s Own is Virginia Woolf’s greatest achievement, because it links us, the lucky ones — me, your teachers, each one of you students, everyone here in this room today — to all those less lucky human beings of the past; our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers; those women whose chances, and hopes, are over. In perhaps her greatest act of creation, Woolf’s imagination lets them live again. She says they can be redeemed by us. That through our lives, they can come back to life.’

I stopped to catch my breath, and take stock of the room. Yes, I could feel it gathering. We were together. It was warming, melting. I looked for Gerda; yes, she was there. I still couldn’t see Virginia. Time to produce a clincher.

But I was suddenly blank; I felt alone. I needed others; I needed Virginia.

Keep their attention. You can’t fail now .

And then a hand went up from the floor. Two-thirds of the way back, so not a lecturer, but she looked too old to be a student. I fell upon it, a temporary respite. Her face was worn. Greying hair, a cheap jacket. Could not wait till the questions at the end.

‘Yes?’

‘I am sorry for ask, but please, can you read it for us, this text, Room of One’s Own . I have no English books. Here they are very expensive. I like very much what you say, and I want — how to say — I long to read it.’

The room was quiet, attentive. It took courage for the woman to say it. By an irony, I had prepared a long quote, but it was on the last page of my written paper, the paper that I had decided not to give, and I’d torn it up, thrown it down on the floor. I dared not fumble through the mess at my feet.

‘I had intended to read a passage, yes. But, a small problem. Can any of you help me — Professor Melike, one of your colleagues maybe? I don’t seem to have it with me. It’s the passage about Shakespeare’s sister.’

The front rows rustled and muttered, uncomfortable. Shrugs of apology, raised empty hands. OK, this was going to end in bathos. Not the end of the world , I told myself — but yes, an opportunity lost. I smiled an apology to the brave questioner.

‘No joy at the front? Sorry about that. I think I will end there, and take questions.’ I stepped back from the lectern. I waited for applause.

But there were feet, loud feet on the wooden steps that led up from the hall to the stage. Fast heavy feet. I looked up, startled. Red hair, flashing like a squirrel in the sunlight. Pale face, Gerda’s beloved face. Her shoulders were pulled back, soldier-style. She smiled an unnaturally wide, scared smile.

‘Gerda! Darling, what are you doing — ’

‘It’s Ok, Mum. It’ll be all right. I’ve got it, see. I will read the passage.’

I thought: my God. I thought: this is great. And then: what if Gerda reads the wrong bit? ‘I’d better do it sweetie, thank you.’

But gently, firmly, she pushed me aside. She was bigger than before, taller, older, but she was still just a teenager, my teenager, my lovely daughter — rash, buoyant, terrified. She smelled of chewing-gum, fear and cheap soap.

She touched the microphone. A thundercrack. The audience was open-mouthed. Melike was frowning, speaking over her shoulder, half on her feet, was it an incident?

‘I am her daughter,’ she said to the hall, one pale finger pointing in my direction. ‘It’s OK, I’m not a nutter. I’ve got the book. Now I will read it. It’s brilliant, actually. You’re going to love it.’

There was a wave of friendly laughter.

Then she began. Her voice was nervous, at first, yes, she went too fast, but as she spoke, it steadied, strengthened; the words carried her, the words became her, they walked confidently, gracefully through the hall, they were Virginia Woolf, alive and with us ( where was Virginia, I thought, briefly ?) — they were Shakespeare, too — and Shakespeare’s sister.: