SOURCE: Newman, Herta. “Stories about Storymaking.” In Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Brown: Toward a Realism of Uncertainty, pp. 17-29. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.

In the following essay, Newman assesses Woolf's success as a storyteller, concluding that her stories “fail to satisfy the reader's desire for certainty.”

But what are stories? Toys I twist, bubbles I blow, one ring passes through another. Sometimes I begin to doubt if there are stories.¹

Virginia Woolf's stories have not generally received the acclaim accorded to her novels and essays. Yet she is an inveterate storyteller, and it is in her stories that she deploys most dramatically the evasive strategy that informs her fiction. Her novels abound in stories and sketches that should enliven description, illuminate character, and underscore the play of chance and conflict. Stories are marshalled to advance the progress of critical discussion, to strengthen argument, and to conjure the elusive...