Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf: An Interpretation
Kew Gardens (short story)
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1st 1919 edition
Kew Gardens is a short story by the English author Virginia Woolf.
It was first published privately in 1919, then more widely in 1921 in the collection Monday or Tuesday, and subsequently in the posthumous collection A Haunted House (1944). Originally accompanying illustrations by Vanessa Bell, its visual organisation has been described as analogous to a post-impressionist painting.
Plot summary
Set in the eponymous botanic garden in London on a hot July day, the narrative gives brief glimpses of four groups of people as they pass by a flowerbed. The story begins with a description of the oval-shaped flowerbed. Woolf mixes the colours of the petals of the flowers, floating to the ground, with the seemingly random movements of the visitors, which she likens to the apparently irregular movements of butterflies.
The first group to pass by are a married couple, and the man, called Simon, recalls his visit fifteen years earlier when he begged a girl called Lily to marry him, but was rejected. Again Woolf centres the apparent randomness of the decision on the flitting of a dragonfly, which if it stops would indicate that Lily would say 'yes', but instead it kept whirling around and around in the air.
The woman who became Simon's wife, Eleanor, has a different memory of the gardens, a much earlier one, when she and other little girls sat near the lake with their easels, painting pictures of the water lilies. She had never seen red water lilies before. Someone kissed her on the back of the neck, the experience of which has remained with her ever since: the "mother of all kisses".
The couple with their children move out of vision and the narrative now focuses on a snail in the flowerbed. It appears to have a definite goal, and the narrator describes the vista before it and the journey it has to tackle. The focus pulls back again.
Two men stand at the
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
1st 1919 edition
Kew Gardens is a short story by the English author Virginia Woolf.
It was first published privately in 1919, then more widely in 1921 in the collection Monday or Tuesday, and subsequently in the posthumous collection A Haunted House (1944). Originally accompanying illustrations by Vanessa Bell, its visual organisation has been described as analogous to a post-impressionist painting.
Plot summary
Set in the eponymous botanic garden in London on a hot July day, the narrative gives brief glimpses of four groups of people as they pass by a flowerbed. The story begins with a description of the oval-shaped flowerbed. Woolf mixes the colours of the petals of the flowers, floating to the ground, with the seemingly random movements of the visitors, which she likens to the apparently irregular movements of butterflies.
The first group to pass by are a married couple, and the man, called Simon, recalls his visit fifteen years earlier when he begged a girl called Lily to marry him, but was rejected. Again Woolf centres the apparent randomness of the decision on the flitting of a dragonfly, which if it stops would indicate that Lily would say 'yes', but instead it kept whirling around and around in the air.
The woman who became Simon's wife, Eleanor, has a different memory of the gardens, a much earlier one, when she and other little girls sat near the lake with their easels, painting pictures of the water lilies. She had never seen red water lilies before. Someone kissed her on the back of the neck, the experience of which has remained with her ever since: the "mother of all kisses".
The couple with their children move out of vision and the narrative now focuses on a snail in the flowerbed. It appears to have a definite goal, and the narrator describes the vista before it and the journey it has to tackle. The focus pulls back again.
Two men stand at the