The Voyage Out

The beginning of The Voyage Out uses imagery to describe the setting of London as an environment one might wish to escape. London is characterized, mostly through Helen’s third-person limited perspective, as downtrodden, overburdened, and oppressively dank. Although Helen hates to leave her children behind, Woolf shows London as a metropolis from which citizens who have the substantial economic privilege required to do so are eager, even desperate, to take a break.

The setting quickly shifts from London to the ship Euphrosyne. The Euphrosyne is named after a Greek goddess of charm and beauty, a name suggestive of the pleasures the ship promises. The allusion to an ancient Greek goddess evokes Mr. Pepper and Ridley’s passion for Greek studies. Thus, the ship is an ideal setting for a hopeful and invigorating voyage. The positivity this name exudes is important because there are certain anxieties that unsettle characters as they voyage into the open ocean. The vastness of the ocean is uncanny, and the distance between the human body and the safety and reliability of land can be frightening precisely because it’s awe-inspiring. This interrelation between excitement and fear is central to the process of Self-Discovery that many of the novel’s characters go through in the course of their travels. Woolf therefore plays with the boundaries between fear, adventure, and comfort, highlighting the paradoxical idea that an adventure can be beautiful because it is frightening.

Woolf uses satire to poke fun at her characters’ intellectually driven culture. For Mr. Pepper and Ridley, a passion for antiquities reflects early-20th-century academic and cultural interests in the classics. Studying the classics and being well-versed in Greek and Latin were signs that an individual (typically a man) was well-educated and therefore a member of a higher social class. At the same time, English conceptions of the so-called “classical” cultures of ancient Greece and Rome were central to the formation of England’s idea of itself as the center of a benevolent empire, spreading civilization to the rest of the world just as the Romans had done centuries earlier. Through Mr. Pepper and Ridley’s intellectual pretensions, Woolf satirizes British Colonialism and the Concept of Civilization as English people of the Edwardian era understood it.

This introduces a crucial conflict in the novel: class status. The Ambroses, Willoughby, Rachel, and Mr. Pepper are all part of a privileged social class. They can afford to hire domestic help, send their children to elite schools, and pay for a luxurious standard of living that includes things like recreational travel to distant South America. When the Dalloways arrive, it becomes clear that, as privileged as the upper-middle-class intellectuals on the ship may be, there exist many rungs on the social ladder above them. Through Richard and Clarissa Dalloway, Woolf introduces another satirical look at Englishmen and women of high social status. Richard and Clarissa are not only wealthy but also connected to politics and therefore can be considered influential. As a result of their proximity to real power, they are more conservative than the other voyagers, and some tension develops from this divergence of political opinions. One example is Clarissa and Richard’s belief that women should not have the right to vote. In 1918, the United Kingdom passed the Representation of the People Act, which granted women over the age of 30 with property rights the right to vote. It wasn’t until 1928 that all women were granted the right to vote. The Voyage Out was published in 1915, three years before the first round of women’s suffrage found legal success. Therefore, women’s suffrage would have been a hot topic of discussion in England, mirrored in Woolf’s novel. Richard’s conservative views about gender roles prevent him from considering women his intellectual equals. Clarissa enables this belief because she considers herself helpless without him. Their husband-and-wife dynamic therefore echoes their conservative notions of old-fashioned, traditional lifestyles.

These gender roles are also important topics in Woolf’s novel. British culture at the time systematically valued traditional gender roles, in which men worked and women took care of the home. Rachel is unmarried, but as a wealthy young woman, she is not expected to work; instead, she lives a life of leisure. Clarissa and Helen take care of the home and exist to complement their husbands. Helen, for example, is constantly reorganizing rooms so that Ridley is more comfortable. Gender roles in England changed drastically in World War I, when men left to fight and women took over traditionally male roles throughout the nation. But until then, the expectations of women of a certain privileged class were to marry, have children, and be submissive to their husbands.

The characters in this novel insist that their roles in one another’s lives are also based in love. Clarissa is genuinely in love with Richard. She respects him, but he is also her dearest friend. Rachel wants a love like that, too. However, when Richard kisses Rachel, Woolf implies that love is not necessarily a consistent structure on which to build a reliable life. Richard also believes himself in love with his wife, but his attraction to Rachel suggests that his marriage is not enough for him. Rachel triggers the other characters’ desires to have their youths back, before the responsibilities of marriage, children, and career encroached on their happiness. The kiss between Rachel and Richard can be seen as evidence of a personal crisis for Richard. More significant for the novel, though, is the crisis it triggers in Rachel. This incident develops the theme of Human Connection Through Forced Proximity. Though in this case the connection is brief and, from Rachel’s perspective, largely unwelcome, it nonetheless catalyzes a process of Self-Discovery that will occupy her for the rest of her life. It puts the topic of love and happiness in question and introduces conflict between characters who are stuck on a ship together. Older characters advise Rachel that the real goal of life is happiness, but what is happiness?

When the characters argue about the value of art, it serves as a method through which Woolf is able to pose, in a subtly meta-fictive way, questions about the value of literature, including that of the novel within which these characters exist. Richard dismisses art as necessary to culture but nonetheless pernicious, as it distracts from reality. Clarissa argues that art is valuable precisely because of this distraction. Clarissa is capable of being deeply moved by all forms of art. This implies a sensitivity to emotion that Richard represses in himself. Clarissa may have stringently conservative views like her husband, but she is open to having new and formative experiences through art. Richard appreciates this in Clarissa, believing that it’s important to have some balance in society. Their disagreement reflects gendered ideas about who art is for in a patriarchal culture: Clarissa’s passion for art is presented as evidence of her femininity, while Richard is all the more masculine because his high-pressure career in politics doesn’t give him enough time for art. At stake in this conversation is Woolf’s own role in her society as an author and artist.

Another important topic introduced in these first chapters is the role of the British Empire. Clarissa and Richard are extremely patriotic. They often exclaim how lucky they are to be English, and they believe that England’s Colonialism and the Concept of Civilization it promotes abroad is beneficial for the world. Mr. Grice, the ship’s steward, helpfully deflates this patriotic worldview when he argues that a country is just a sliver of land, meaningless and insignificant when compared to the inhuman vastness of the ocean. For Clarissa, England means something symbolic about herself. In a way, this is an acknowledgement of her privilege. But it also suggests that Clarissa is myopic in her understanding of the world. In believing the British Empire to be a gift to the world, Clarissa and Richard don’t consider the millions of people for whom British colonization means the loss of their autonomy and culture. Moreover, by the time Woolf writes this novel, the First World War has already begun to unravel the British Empire, meaning that Woolf and her readers can see what the Dalloways cannot—that their senses of identity and self-esteem are built on shifting sand. Woolf satirizes Clarissa and Richard’s patriotism to suggest that identity should be developed through more than just nationalism or privilege. England is a small country in the grand scheme of the vast ocean, as is symbolized through their voyage out and away from England.