The Voyage Out (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Virginia Woolf
- First Published: 1915
- Type of Work: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: The early 1900’s
- Setting: London and an unspecified resort on the South American coast
- Principal Characters: Rachel Vinrace, Helen Ambrose, Terrence Hewet, St. John Hirst
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Self-discovery, Voyages, Philosophy or philosophers, Twentieth century, Marriage, Faith, London, Ships, South America or South Americans, Intellect, Piano music
- Locales: London, England, Oceans, South America
The Novel
The sad overtones of this novel’s beginning concern Helen Ambrose’s departure from London, where she is leaving her two young children because she and her husband, Ridley Ambrose, are sailing to an unnamed resort on the South American coast, where they will spend the winter season. The omniscient narrator tells the reader that, as they walk through an ugly, industrialized London, Helen’s mind—filled with “misery for her children, the poor, the rain”—“was like a wound exposed to dry in the air.” By the novel’s end, this wound will be opened again by...
[The entire page is 3221 words long]
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