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9 FROM ENGLAND TO EDEN: GARDENS,
GENDER AND KNOWLEDGE IN VIRGINIA
WOOLF’S THE VOYAGE OUT^1
Karina Jakubowicz
In 1909, Virginia Woolf wrote of her developing novel that she wanted to ‘bring
out a stir of live men and women, against a background’, feeling that she was
‘quite right to attempt it, but it is immensely diffi cult to do’.^2 Th e novel in ques-
tion became Th e Voyage Out (1915), a text where the ‘background’ is anything
but secondary to the liveliness of its characters. Woolf ’s emphasis on the loca-
tions and environments featured in the novel can be seen in her choice of title,
which invokes the travel or adventure narrative, both of which are heavily reliant
on a physical journey through space. Like Richard Hakluyt’s Voyages and Discov-
eries (1582) and Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle (1839) – two texts which
are known to have exerted a direct infl uence on Woolf – the narrative trajec-
tory traces a line from the known spaces of home to the unknown landscapes
beyond Britain.^3 Yet what distinguishes these texts is that Woolf ’s protagonist
is a woman, and her experience of travelling through these spaces is told in rela-
tion to the cultural politics of space and sexuality that governed Woolf and her
contemporaries. Th e importance of the ‘backgrounds’ in the novel thus place the
themes of physical access and visibility at the centre of Woolf ’s feminist subtext.
Th e Voyage Out approaches the themes of women’s physical and social mobil-
ity through the character of Rachel Vinrace, whose intellectual awakening is
rendered as a journey through physical, social and intellectual boundaries. At
the beginning of the novel she is on her father’s ship, accompanying him and a
handful of other passengers to South America. She has previously been brought
up ‘with excessive care’ by her aunts in Richmond, and rendered so ignorant by
her restrictive surroundings that ‘She really might be six years old’.^4 Th e ship, the
Euphrosyne, is named aft er one of the three Graces, and alludes to Rachel’s role as
‘her father’s daughter’, a graceful helpmate who is required to stand in place of her
deceased mother.^5 In the symbolic geography of the narrative, Rachel’s ‘maiden
voyage’ out into the world and the physical progress of the ship become synony-
mous. Th e symbiosis between the two is especially evident in one description