From England to Eden 135
lections of Richmond Park. Th e passage also recalls the idea of being forced or
‘driven’ onto a particular path. Th is is an association that Woolf has already estab-
lished with Rachel’s circumambulations in the parks and gardens of Richmond,
in which the ‘high walls’ of psychic and physical space keep her ‘turned aside’ and
prevent her from making a straight course. In all three of these passages, Rachel’s
experience of garden spaces is marked by her frustrated attempts at physical and
intellectual mobility. Th e notion of being ‘hedged in’ or walking around a space
repeatedly not only describe the futile nature of Rachel’s past circumstances, but
is also at odds with the concept of ‘voyaging outwards’ that is proff ered by the
title. If Rachel’s narrative is predominantly a voyage out, then the garden spaces of
her past are implicit to the ‘inward’ space that she is voyaging from.
Th e Voyage Out features several other descriptions of British gardens which
echo the limitations placed on Rachel in her youth, and place them in a wider
context. In these passages it is possible to see how the imagery of gardens
becomes a metaphorical language for conveying social and political systems. At
one point in the novel, Helen’s feelings towards her native country are expressed
though an imaginary garden, through which she metonymically conceives the
whole of Britain:
She adopted, indeed, a condescending tone towards that poor island, which was now
advancing chilly crocuses and nipped violets in nooks, in copses, in cosy corners,
tended by gardeners in muffl ers, who were always touching their hats and bobbing
obsequiously.^18As with the gardens of Rachel’s past, Woolf makes clear references to physical
restriction, using imagery that suggests cloistered withdrawal: fl owers of violets
‘nipped’ in tight buds, in ‘nooks’ and ‘cosy corners’. Th e gardener, too, is in a state
of concealment and submission, his muffl er suggesting a physical restriction of
the body and voice, as well as a lack of political agency which leaves him capable
only of the silent and compliant act of ‘bobbing obsequiously’.
While the gardener’s affl iction is one of class, Woolf ’s close association
between space and social obstacle in the text overwhelmingly refers to the issue
of gender. Th e majority of the British gardens are populated by women, and
showcase diff erent kinds of femininity while alluding to the attitudes that these
women have to their social and physical surroundings. Th e gardens in Richmond
stage Rachel’s experience as a young woman with a conventional middle-class
upbringing, but they also refer to the characters of her aunts who accept these
conventions and live according to them. In these instances the older women
enforce the status quo while the younger woman struggles with it, portraying two
generational attitudes to the behaviour demanded of them. Other depictions of
English gardens in the text also feature older women, such as Miss Umpleby, an
elderly, spinster gardener who is mentioned in passing by Mr Flushing :