The Wise Virgins
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This was Leonard Woolf's second novel, written just before the First World War, at the height of the suffragette movement, when early feminism began to find its voice. Men were suddenly required to see women differently, and this novel explores their dilemma and the difficulties of accepting a new awareness of gender. Art student Harry, Jewish and suburban, meets cool middle-class Camilla in a London studio and pursues her romantically whilst painting her portrait. But this can be no brutish capture of the girl to satisfy his own ends, with the woman to become merely his wife at the end of it. Mysterious and elusive Camilla is more than a prize for male conquest; she is her own person, and the book looks at how Harry must change his attitude to accommodate her feelings. The novel feels like an observation of women through the wrong end of a telescope - to the men of the early 20th century, the educated female was a difficult and sometimes dangerous creature with a mind and destiny of her own to follow. In a way, Woolf was looking at how he should handle his new relationship with Virginia (he wrote this novel soon after their marriage), how not to trespass on her talent, how the demands of marriage would affect her writing and how to meet his own carnal needs. Harry loves the new and independent thinker in Camilla but he also wants a fierce melding of souls and bodies which Camilla cannot give him - she confesses she does not love him. Rejected, Harry is seduced by Gwen, Camilla's contrast, a childish woman Harry knows he will grow tired of, a woman who evokes all the unevolved attitudes with which he has battled. In a sense Camilla is Harry's ennobling, and Gwen is his fall. Not just a novel reflecting its times, The Wise Virgins also stands alone as an unappreciated roman a clef in which the lives of the famous Bloomsbury Set are thinly disguised. Essential reading for anyone interested in the period and the people. (Kirkus UK)
