How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. A scene in a battlefield is more important than a scene in a shop. (4.31)
Woolf thinks that people value books about war more than books about people sitting around talking. Is this still true? (Hint: check out this list of all the movies that have won an Oscar for best picture.)
Quote #8
If one asked what her life has meant to her, she would say that she remembered the streets lit for the battle of Balaclava [...] And if one asked her [...] but what were you doing on the fifth of April 1868 [...], she would look vague and remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked [...] Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. (5.13)
Warfare is documented; dinners are not. Woolf wants a kind of literature that documents things like dinners and fleeting feelings. But would anyone want to read it?
Quote #9
There seemed to be some obstacle, some impediment of Mr. A's mind which blocked the fountain of creative energy and shored it within narrow limits. And remembering the lunch party at Oxbridge, and the cigarette ash and the Manx cat and Tennyson and Christina Rossetti all in a bunch, it seemed possible that the impediment lay there. (6.4)
To the list of all the horrors of war we can add: bad novels.