The Voyage Out is both a young woman's coming-of-age story and a thoughtful depiction of a search for meaning in a society whose traditional values have been overturned. The young woman, Rachel Vinrace, is in her early 20s but has, after being raised motherless in a convent, the naivete of a child. She accompanies her aunt and uncle on a voyage across the Atlantic to South American, where they vacation in a villa for the season. They soon mingle with the British guests in a nearby hotel, leading to Rachel's first love affair.

Aside from depicting some interesting and amusing characters in a colorful setting, The Voyage Out, even in its title, reflects the intellectual search for life's meaning at a time when traditional beliefs and values have been overturned by Darwin, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, etc. Woolf certainly wasn't the only author of the day to address this. She does so by placing her characters in a new world, where they cautiously explore their new surroundings while at the same time trying to preserve the comfortable forms and habits of the old. The question "What do we do now?" is always present. In the end, they turn toward one another, but will that be the answer?

The Voyage Out was Virginia Woolf's first novel, and is a little unfocused at times, but is conventionally written and thus much easier to read than her later works. Fans of Mrs. Dalloway will certainly want to read it to see Clarissa make a preview appearance as one of the passengers on the sea voyage. ( )

originally posted on my blog, http://smallpressures.blogspot.com

While browsing at a used bookstore, looking for Woolf essays, I came across A Voyage Out (1915) and realized that I had never actually read a Virginia Woolf novel. Although the Woolfs did not found Hogarth Press until 1917, in the spirit of Virginia Woolf's contribution to small press publication, I think A Voyage Out deserves a place here.

I have often appreciated the honesty and eccentricity of Woolf's voice as an essayist, and I am not disappointed with my first try at a Woolf novel. Voyage both satirizes and digs into the lives of wealthy Brits of the early 20th century as they travel to South America for a months-long journey. Woolf gives us all the conversation and inertia of a Jane Austen novel with a lot more emotion and a sharper, more insistent critique.

I'm saddened at the negative responses to this book. Woolf's later novels eclipse her first, I suppose: too bad. This is descriptive, sensitive, and thoroughly interesting, and perhaps a little autobiographical. I've never been a girl in her early maturity, but I bet any such would enjoy this book. Even years after having read the book. Even now, nearly eleven years after reading it, I recall scenes, conversations, states of mind; the book uncannily looks forward to Woolfs later work, while continuing that of Jane Austen. An astonishing first novel.

Virginia Woolf's debut novel tells of the long sea journey made to South America by young Rachel Vinrace, about her friendship with the older Helen and her falling in love with Terrence Hewet. Life however intervenes in a capricious way.

Woolf's arresting debut signposts the explorations in writing she would make later. Full of visionary passages the novel with it's remarkable ending also teams with interesting characters. ( )

Rachel Vinrace is a character whose life in England is structured by Victorian ideas of the proper development of young women. Her outer life is restricted by her maiden aunts, and her inner life is kept in check by self-discipline in her piano playing and the restraint imposed on her imagination in the kind of literature she is allowed to read.

Rachel has an opportunity to take a voyage out of her bonds on a cruise to South America. She begins to loosen her self restrictions as she studies the artificial and real motives of her fellow travelers. While on her father's ship, Rachel's liberation is as slow and determined as her piano playing, staying with the composition but engaging in a few private improvisations.

While staying at a hotel in South America, the pace of Rachel's development accelerates. As she accompanies other brave souls on a short guided trip into the wilds of the jungle, Rachel's insight races. But she has no meaningful starting point or signposts to guide her in self exploration. Her emotions become increasingly intense and her behavior more erratic as she falls in love with a fellow passenger. Rachel's ideas take flight with striking visual images and loose emotional associations. A common resolution of her out of control improvisations is the complete peace of immersion in an undersea world, a final reduction of "fever."

Virginia Woolf's first novel is an excellent self portrait of budding bipolar disorder. The author sketches this portrait by producing unexpected and "pretty notes" as Louis Armstrong described his jazz. Woolf ultimately found her own underwater peace suggesting the tremendous toll of manic creativity. ( )