Virginia Woolf

An Unwritten Novel (Illustrated) Virginia Woolf

The female narrator is travelling on the train from London to the south coast. She is a people-watcher, and takes an interest in her fellow passengers, all of whom are trying to avoid making eye contact with the other people in the carriage. All, that is, except one: a woman sitting across from the narrator, who stares straight ahead, and who, the narrator surmises, harbours some secret. Christening this female stranger 'Minnie Marsh', the narrator proceeds to invent a whole life for this unknown woman, based on the look that the narrator reads in her eyes. She builds up a 'picture' of the woman: unmarried, childless, going to visit her sister-in-law at Eastbourne. She believes that 'Minnie' has committed some sort of crime, memories of which she carries around with her, and decides that the dark secret Minnie carries around with her is that she was negligent when looking after her baby brother, and left him unattended, with the result that he died from scalding. The narrator then invents other personages from Minnie's life - a travelling salesman who lodges with Minnie's sister-in-law, whom she names James Moggridge - but struggles to pin them down. But in any event, her analysis of the woman's life turns out to be wrong: when the train pulls into the station at Eastbourne, the narrator expects that 'Minnie' will not be met by anyone, but is surprised to see that Minnie is met at the platform by a young man who appears to be her son. She isn't childless, after all, and is probably not heading off to stay with her sister-in-law. Woolf's narrator has got it all wrong. But after lamenting her mistakes for a few moments, she then pulls herself together and celebrates 'life' for being so mysterious and elusive: life is far more fascinating and difficult to pin down than her creative flights of fancy had supposed. She is back where she started, but that's how she likes it: always guessing, always imagining, with real life constantly surprising her and eluding her grasp. The life of the imagination, after all, is what truly matters.