Tightness & Struggle

Abstract

In May 1935, the Woolfs view Nazi Germany first hand. Woolf's 1935 diary reveals the three daunting challenges she now faces; it also showcases her great courage and effort as she seeks to counter each negation with a book. However, her inner artistic battle involves a creeping tightness. She wants to keep loose (and supple) even as she tightens The Years. Is this possible? Her diary, as usual, helps her; she turns to other diaries as well. In September, as Mussolini prepares to pounce on Abyssinia, Woolf reads first a country doctor's (Dr. John Salter’s) diary for the years 1849 to 1932 and then a literary critic’s (John Bailey's Letters and Diaries, 1861–1931). She reads, in short, male voices across “the years,” as chronicled in her novel. She enters into a dialogue with these diarists in her public works.