An Urban Romance: London and the Marriage Plot in Virginia Woolf's 'Night and Day'

Abstract

Night and Dayis something of an uneasy presence among Virginia Woolf’s works. Considered by some to be a disappointingly conservative courtship narrative – an Edwardian take on Jane Austen – the novel nevertheless anticipates Woolf’s so-called ‘mature’ modernist texts on account of the crucial role it assigns to London. Jean Moorcroft Wilson argues that from Jacob’s Roomonwards, it is the city – in lieu of the contrived novelistic plot – that provides Woolf’s novels with shape and unity. The same is true of Night and Day, where the key developments of the romance plot occur within the urban space; indeed, the budding relationship between Katherine Hilbery and Ralph Denham is facilitated by the city. This, additionally, creates a link between spaces/places and emotions, which Andrew Tucker sees as essentially modernist. Yet while the way London figures into the narrative may push Night and Daytowards literary experimentation, the conclusion it brings about appears to be staunchly Victorian: a marriage ceremony in Westminster Cathedral. Is it possible to resolve this tension? The key question, it seems, is what sort of a relationship Katherine and Ralph have forged by the end of the novel: is it a partnership that will give Katharine the freedom she longs for, or a rehearsal of old, hierarchical models in which the woman is reduced to a prized possession? The novel, once more, pulls in two contradictory directions, substantiating both interpretations, and the unresolved ending makes them both equally plausible. By reading Night and Dayas perched precariously between Victorianism and Modernism, the following discussion seeks to expose the novel’s inherent ambivalence – perhaps the most Woolfian quality of all.