Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

I found I had retreated behind my lectern, not consciously, but I needed protection, I held on firmly to the polished wood. I have done my best, she cannot hurt me .

‘Professor Moira Penny,’ she rasped. ( She had attained professorship. At what cost? For God’s sake, at what institution? ) ‘Thank you for your … series of remarks,’ she began. She made it sound like ‘silly remarks’. ‘You spoke about Virginia Woolf almost as if you knew her.’ ( Well I do know her , I thought, as it happens .) ‘This is a very subjective approach. For the students listening, it may have been surprising that there was a complete absence of theory .’ She was getting louder; the microphone squeaked, a painful sound like a giant bat, and her clothes were dark against the sunlight that flooded through the gaps in the curtains. ‘Forgive me if I missed anything , but I did not notice a single citation !’ Louder still. She was becoming shrill. Professor Melike was turning round. Moira Penny loomed black behind her. ‘I myself have written extensively, close, detailed analysis, on Orlando .’ Pause. I noticed her hand was shaking, which explained the fretful, jittery backdrop of small explosions from the microphone — or was that thunder, outside the window? ‘One would have thought it almost literally impossible to speak about Virginia Woolf at the present moment without referring to the collection of papers I both edited and contributed to last year, called — ’ There was an anxious pause as she stopped, pulled a face — no, worse, it was meant to be a smile, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her tongue — and hauled up a gigantic plastic shopping-bag, in which she rooted, and retrieved, at length, a slim volume which she held close to her eyes — ‘ Liminalities and a Reading of One’s Own: Confusions and Elucidations on the Threshold of Woolf’s Room .’ She nodded, satisfied, and looked around the room, as if the title had proved her point. But she had not finished. She raised the microphone. A sudden, agonising burst of howl-round, sudden as a thunderstorm. For a minute, the whole room seemed to shake, people looked startled, it was all going wrong, some of the students were giggling. She looked straight at me. A sudden scream, the violent squawk of a roused macaque. ‘ Why do you always ignore my work? Why do you mock me and abuse me? ’

The room paused, electric, horrified. I felt dizzy. The audience spun. I did not know what to say to her. I have always been afraid of hatred. I opened my mouth. No sound came out. I stared, dry-lipped, across the room. Perhaps it was true. I had not cited. I had abandoned my written draft, which made many nods to academics. I had trusted the text, Virginia’s text, and tried to please the audience. Yes, I was a crowd-pleaser. Her furious face said she saw through me.

‘I–I don’t know how to answer you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I spoke as a writer, not a critic.’

‘WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??’ she screamed at me. She was hanging on to the mike for dear life. Professor Melike was standing beside her, trying to wrestle it away. Moira mimicked me in a monkey squeal. “I speak as a writer, not a critic.”WHY DO YOU THINK WRITERS ARE BETTER THAN CRITICS? Why do you think you’re better than me?’

‘I don’t,’ I said. (Though maybe I did.)

Then I saw my Gerda was waving her hand from the middle of the room, and calling something. I heard ‘… the microphone?’

With a little grunt, Moira lost her grip, and Melike staggered backwards, the mike in her hand. It was ferried backwards over rows of heads to the one where Virginia and Gerda sat together.

‘ She ’s got to say something,’ Gerda said, once the mike was in her grip. She passed it across to Virginia. There was a brief semi-struggle between them. Virginia was trying to push it away, but suddenly she smiled, took it, stood up.

‘Mrs Woolf,’ she said, in her extraordinary voice, low, murmurous, amused. The room, already turbulent, rippled again, a kaleidoscope quake like the start of a migraine. ‘Make what you like of that . I am happy to be a distant relation. Two things. First, I liked the lecture. And, of course — I liked the quotation.’ A short laugh at her own wit, which was rather lost on the audience. ‘Secondly, though, there should be no difference between a writer and a critic. I am a writer and a critic. Virginia Woolf was a writer and a critic. Criticism, in my day, her day, was no different to good writing. It wasn’t hard to understand. I have to admit — (Professor, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name, the woman at the front who spoke so — loudly ) — the meaning of your title escaped me. Why would one write about “ Confusions ”? Perhaps I misheard. Was it “Confucians”?’

She sank down, smiling at her own pun, and passed across the microphone.

Gerda had it. Gerda stood up. ‘I admit I am only fourteen,’ she said. (The liar! ) ‘So I don’t know nearly as much as a professor. But surely writers came first. If there weren’t writers, there wouldn’t be critics, ‘cos they wouldn’t have anything to write about. That’s all I wanted to say.’ Abruptly, she sat down. Almost as quickly, she bounced back up again.

‘I forgot, I want to say something else. Which is about young people. I’m young obviously. And so are all these’ (pointing to the ranks at the back of the room). ‘I don’t want to diss Virginia Woolf, because I think she’s wonderful, and also, with her being here, it would be rude. But there’s one bit of A Room of One’s Own I disagree with.’

(I was getting anxious. My daughter’s ego! At primary school, the teachers would take me aside and tell me they couldn’t stop Gerda talking.)

‘It’s the bit about Mary Carmichael. She is the made-up “young woman” in A Room of One’s Own , in case you haven’t read it, who is supposed to be the next generation of writers. Virginia Woolf makes her quite good, but not that good. Well just because she’s young, that doesn’t prove it. Mary Carmichael might actually be a genius. Even if she’s only a teenager. And the same goes for all these Turkish students, the girls. No-one knows about them, because I expect they write in Turkish — well only Turkish people know, that is — or maybe no-one knows at all.’ ( Gerda, you’re talking much too fast! ) ‘I’m not just saying that I could be a genius. Whereas Virginia says, it could take a hundred years before a woman writer was really great, which leaves out her , who was already great, the greatest writer, maybe, I’ve ever read, but then, as I said, I am only fourteen — and to be honest, thirteen, fourteen in two weeks. It didn’t take a hundred years at all. It’s already happening. It’s already happened.’

With that, thank God, she sank down again, and yielded the microphone to a steward.

‘Time for maybe one more question,’ I said.

A hand was waving by a pillar at the back. A girl. Hang on, two girls, two hands waving. I blinked and stared. No, just one. I was having problems focusing. Could it be that the whole row had got their hands up, waving like a field of young corn? As the hands waved, the audience was blurring; stirring, now, like waves on the sea. I felt very hot, as if I were melting. Was it the menopause? I had to hang on, but I signalled to Professor Melike. ‘Is it possible to open more windows? …Yes, there are questions at the back?’

Only one hand, only one question. A girl student with an intelligent frown, raven-black hair, a computer on her lap. ‘Virginia Woolf, she was rich, she had — what do you say, connections, publishers. How do we do what she did? For her, I think it was more easy.’