The Woolf at the Door

By Cornelia

Yesterday I was chatting by phone with my great pal Ariel, while her five-year-old daughter Eve was trying to simultaneously engage her in conversation about the disappointing quality of snack she had been offered for mid-afternoon sustenance. We were in our respective kitchens—mine in Berkeley, hers in Montclair, New Jersey.

Ariel is without doubt the most well-read woman I have ever met. She’s introduced me to amazing writers over the years—Robertson Davies, for instance, and wonderful children’s books like Half Magic and A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, and Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages. She is in her first year of library school, and has recently taken to re-reading the essays of Virginia Woolf.

“You know the one about ‘the angel in the house’?” she asked.

I admitted that I did not.

“Oh my GOD, Cone,” she said (my sister nicknamed me Cone years ago, because she thinks my head is a little pointy), “you MUST READ it. It is scathingly brilliant. All about how you have to kill the angel in the house if you’re ever going to get professionally serious, as a woman—the Victorian ideal of femininity and everything… well, Evie, if you don’t WANT to eat that, do you want some fruit? We have fruit… It was Woolf’s response to this saccharine poem by Coventry Patmore… Grapes. And Strawberries, I think… Here, Cone, I have to read you part of it… Crackers, then, do you want some crackers?… Where did I leave the book… I think we have cheese too, yes, my darling… Okay, let me just find the right page. I bookmarked it… You don’t want The Yucky Cheese? This wasn’t The Yucky Cheese yesterday. When did this one become The Yucky Cheese? Okay, so… ‘It was she [the angel in the house] who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her...She was intensely sympathetic. She was utterly unselfish. She sacrificed herself daily...’ What kind of juice, sweetie? We have apple or we have white grape… ‘The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. I took my pen in my hand...she slipped behind me and whispered [to me], “My dear, you are a young woman...Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.”

"‘And she made as if to guide my pen...’ No you can NOT have a popsicle, sweetie, I’m sorry. Maybe after dinner.

"‘I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her...’ Yes, you did ask for the popsicle very nicely, but you still can’t have one now. 'Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing...'"

I could hear Eve’s voice piping up in the background. “Mommy,” she said, “I think you burned your lamb chops.”

Ari emailed me later to say that Eve had wanted to know what we’d been talking about, after we’d hung up.

“Cornelia’s book just came out, Evie,” she said, “and I wanted her to know I hoped it would be a bestseller.”

Eve, who’s a big checkers aficionado, pondered that, and then said “So if it’s a bestseller does that mean they will king her?”

Ari replied that she supposed so.

Eve nodded. “Then we’d better hurry up and get her autograph, don’t you think?”