Virginia Woolf (Review Date 25 January 1905)

SOURCE: Woolf, Virginia. Review of The Feminine Note in Fiction, by W. L. Courtney. In The Essays of Virginia Woolf, 1904-1912, Volume I, edited by Andrew McNeillie, pp. 15-17. London: Hogarth Press, 1986.

In the following review, which originally appeared in the newspaper Guardian on January 25, 1905, Woolf rebuts the principal points of Courtney's argument concerning women's writing, concluding that the book raises more questions than it answers.

Mr Courtney is certain that there is such a thing as the feminine note in fiction; he desires, moreover, to define its nature in the book before us, though at the start he admits that the feminine and masculine points of view are so different that it is difficult for one to understand the other. At any rate, he has made a laborious attempt; it is, perhaps, partly for the reason just stated that he...