Advice on Reading: Take No Advice
Virginia Woolf on Freedom and Control
Welcome to Marginalia Monday, where I share entries from my personal commonplace book. This is entry #3.
Full Text - “How Should One Read a Book?” by Virginia Woolf (1932)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) wrote two volumes of literature essays called The Common Reader. This essay comes from the Second Series. I have struggled to understand and enjoy Woolf’s fiction, but I loved this essay so much that I’ve had to split my commonplace entries into three posts.
Quotation 1. “The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.”
Quotation 2. “To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.
Quotation 3. “But to enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves.”
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Woolf argues that “The only advice… is to take no advice.” What is the balance between autonomy in reading and participation in the Great Conversation? Is this good advice for students? Why or why not? (Q1)
What are examples of “heavily furred and gowned” authorities? How can sources of authority either aid or hinder intellectual development? What makes the difference? (Q2)
There’s a distinction between a classical view of freedom—often the ability to choose virtue—and the modern view—absence of all constraints. Which does Woolf have in mind with her “spirit of freedom”? How can you tell? (Q2)
In the last quotation, Woolf introduces a paradox—“to enjoy freedom… we have of course to control ourselves.” Why is self-mastery necessary for freedom? How does this affect our approach to reading? (Q3)
Overall, what is the relationship between submission to tradition and developing a personal taste in reading?
The rest of Woolf’s essay, as the title suggests, gives her answer to the question, “How should one read a book?” I’ll leave you with how she poses the problem:
We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot. This, it may be, is one of the first difficulties that faces us in a library. What is “the very spot”? There may well seem to be nothing but a conglomeration and huddle of confusion. Poems and novels, histories and memoirs, dictionaries and blue-books; books written in all languages by men and women of all tempers, races, and ages jostle each other on the shelf. And outside the donkey brays, the women gossip at the pump, the colts gallop across the fields. Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasure from what we read?
More from this essay:
Part 3. Advice on Reading: Judge Your Author (Coming November 17)
Bene lege!