Night and Day by Virginia Woolf (love story novels in english .txt) 📕
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Although known for her later experiments with style and structure, Virginia Woolf set out in her early novels to master the traditional form. Her second novel, Night and Day, presents itself as a seemingly conventional marriage plot, complete with love triangles, broken engagements, and unrequited affections. Beneath these conventional trappings, however, the book’s deeper concerns are resolutely subversive. The main characters—a quartet of friends and would-be lovers—come together, pull apart, and struggle to reconcile socially-prescribed norms of love and marriage with their own beliefs and ambitions.
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- Author: Virginia Woolf
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“And though one never thinks anyone good enough for the people one’s fond of, he has the kindest, truest instincts, I’m sure, and though he seems nervous and his manner is not commanding, I only think these things because it’s Katharine. And now I’ve written this, it comes over me that, of course, all the time, Katharine has what he hasn’t. She does command, she isn’t nervous; it comes naturally to her to rule and control. It’s time that she should give all this to someone who will need her when we aren’t there, save in our spirits, for whatever people say, I’m sure I shall come back to this wonderful world where one’s been so happy and so miserable, where, even now, I seem to see myself stretching out my hands for another present from the great Fairy Tree whose boughs are still hung with enchanting toys, though they are rarer now, perhaps, and between the branches one sees no longer the blue sky, but the stars and the tops of the mountains.
“One doesn’t know any more, does one? One hasn’t any advice to give one’s children. One can only hope that they will have the same vision and the same power to believe, without which life would be so meaningless. That is what I ask for Katharine and her husband.”
XII“Is Mr. Hilbery at home, or Mrs. Hilbery?” Denham asked, of the parlormaid in Chelsea, a week later.
“No, sir. But Miss Hilbery is at home,” the girl answered.
Ralph had anticipated many answers, but not this one, and now it was unexpectedly made plain to him that it was the chance of seeing Katharine that had brought him all the way to Chelsea on pretence of seeing her father.
He made some show of considering the matter, and was taken upstairs to the drawing-room. As upon that first occasion, some weeks ago, the door closed as if it were a thousand doors softly excluding the world; and once more Ralph received an impression of a room full of deep shadows, firelight, unwavering silver candle flames, and empty spaces to be crossed before reaching the round table in the middle of the room, with its frail burden of silver trays and china teacups. But this time Katharine was there by herself; the volume in her hand showed that she expected no visitors.
Ralph said something about hoping to find her father.
“My father is out,” she replied. “But if you can wait, I expect him soon.”
It might have been due merely to politeness, but Ralph felt that she received him almost with cordiality. Perhaps she was bored by drinking tea and reading a book all alone; at any rate, she tossed the book on to a sofa with a gesture of relief.
“Is that one of the moderns whom you despise?” he asked, smiling at the carelessness of her gesture.
“Yes,” she replied. “I think even you would despise him.”
“Even I?” he repeated. “Why even I?”
“You said you liked modern things; I said I hated them.”
This was not a very accurate report of their conversation among the relics, perhaps, but Ralph was flattered to think that she remembered anything about it.
“Or did I confess that I hated all books?” she went on, seeing him look up with an air of inquiry. “I forget—”
“Do you hate all books?” he asked.
“It would be absurd to say
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