University of Virginia Library

Section IX (142.22-227.15; A1 [142.6]-228.25)

Occupying almost a quarter of the novel, Section IX begins at noon as Septimus and his wife visit Sir William Bradshaw, roundly criticized for his unsympathetic diagnosis of Septimus's illness and for his prescription of rest and a "sense of proportion." The section contains as well a mildly satirical portrait of Lady Bruton who entertains Richard Dalloway at luncheon, and a condemning portrait of Miss Kilman who accompanies Elizabeth Dalloway shopping. It concludes about 6 P.M. with Dr. Holmes's visit to Septimus, who in a gesture of confusion and defiance hurls himself from the window— the climactic scene which Woolf sought to underscore by directing her American and British printers on page 227 to leave two blank lines. For Raverat she made no such revision.

Other changes made for Apr in this section are minor stylistic ones, occurring on nearly every page of the 85-page segment, but none of which appear on Raverat's set: revises in punctuation (29), capitalization (5), deletions (17), insertions (20), substitutions (18), spelling changes (7), and syntax (3); in addition, she indicated on page 209 that two paragraphs were to be run together, another alteration she failed to make for Raverat. Since this section was too long to be corrected in one stint, it is likely that Woolf read quickly over the whole, making occasional revises, until she arrived at the climactic scene, finding the final paragraphs unsuitable. Although the stylistic revises on Apr belong to Type III or, more probably, Type V, the typescript revision of the suicide scene inserted between pages 224 and 225 was almost certainly done at Monks House before 10 February.

A transcription of the typescript revision for Raverat's set is provided in Appendix II. Although hastily prepared and not carefully proofread, this single-spaced typescript probably served as copy for the similar typescripts inserted in the Hogarth and Harcourt proofsets. The left margin of the Raverat insertion is skewed; one sentence is heavily erased, almost illegible; and there are obvious typographical errors (e.g., "opeining" for "opening"; "throwin" for "throwing"; "stair case" for "staircase") which are corrected in the double-spaced typescript inserted in the Harcourt proofs.[5] The typescript

revision borrows liberally from an earlier passage (A1 139-140) which did not undergo any revision at the proof-reading stage, and Woolf continued to tinker with the passage after proofsets for Raverat and Harcourt were mailed, deleting the second half of the question, "Only human beings—what did they want of one?" The Hogarth edition (E1 225.12) prints: "Only human beings?" Although other variants between the proofsets and the published editions are less substantive for this depiction of suicide, the main point for this study is that the Raverat proofs allow the dating of this typescript revision to be placed at 6-10 February. A collation of the proofs and the first editions suggests further that in this case the Hogarth edition reflects Woolf's later changes.

Section IX contains twelve other passages which Woolf emended on Raverat's set, and two of these represent unique readings unavailable in either of the printed editions. Four others are correctly transcribed from the other proofsets, whereas the remaining six revises appear to be Type I changes, transcription errors, or Type II changes, authorial oversights. Furthermore, these revises cluster in what must have been short proofreading stints: four occur between pages 149 and 155; three, between pages 198 and 201; and three, between pages 220 and 224. No changes appear on R between pages 155 and 198—a lengthy section where Woolf made numerous changes on the other two proofsets—except for the two revised passages representing unique readings to the Raverat proofs. Both of these revises are made in pencil.

The alterations at R 175.4 and R 184.10-11 are problematic in that they are the only changes in pencil on the Raverat proofs, and there are no corresponding changes made for Apr.[6] That they are in pencil and that they occur relatively close to each other would suggest that they were made at the same reading of the Raverat proofs, a reading undertaken independently of those for the published editions. If Woolf rushed through Section IX in order to provide Raverat a more polished version of Septimus's suicide scene, then it is possible that she read this forty-page segment and made only two changes at the time. Returning later to the Harcourt and Hogarth proofsets, she made full revises for them (Type V).

The alteration at R 175.4 shows clearly that Woolf intended to delete the semicolon after "miracle" rather than merely the top half of the punctuation

mark: a slash is drawn through the entire mark, with the abbreviation "d/" pencilled in the right margin, her characteristic symbol for deletion. Although the semicolon is not altered at Apr 175.4, the American printer nevertheless deleted it—a fortuitous error which produces the sentence Woolf probably intended.[7] The first Hogarth edition, on the other hand, prints "miracle," which would suggest that Woolf may have made an alteration on the Hogarth proofs similar to the one she made for Raverat, but that the British printer misinterpreted her directions and deleted only the top half of the mark. In this case the alteration at R 175.4 represents the most reliable reading in the proof corrections, and we can conclude that the omission of this revision in Apr is an authorial oversight. The hypothesis that Woolf intentionally omitted all the other revises made for Apr between pages 155 and 198 and included for Raverat only the one change in a punctuation mark makes her appear more haphazard and idiosyncratic than she was. Rather, it is more plausible that these Apr revises were made after mid-February.

The second pencilled revision occurs at R 184.10-11 where Woolf inserted the word "could" and altered "understood" to "understand" to produce the following passage in which Clarissa Dalloway imagines asking Peter Walsh (italics mine):

If Woolf pencilled in this change only on the Raverat set as she read quickly through this portion of Section IX, it is not unlikely that she overlooked it later when she took up her pen to correct the other two proofsets. In context, the reading provided by R is superior to that in the two first editions, not only because it is consistent with the verb tense of the subsequent sentence, but also because it is more appropriate to the character of Peter Walsh. The omission of this revision for both A1 and E1 appears, then, to be another authorial oversight (Type II). As in the previous case (R 175.4), the Raverat proofs here present the preferred reading.

In addition to these cases of authorial oversight, instances of transcription errors occur in Section IX. Attempting to account for the variants produced by these errors, E. F. Shields cites two cases and argues that E1 produced variants which are "perhaps the result of changes which Virginia Woolf made for the Hogarth edition on the final proof-sheets" (160). Shields did not have access to the Raverat proofs, and thus her argument cannot account for existing evidence: it now becomes clear that many of the variants between E1 and A1 resulted from Woolf's transcription errors. Thus at R 198.12-13, Woolf inserted the phrase "made one feel so small" after deleting "was quite different from any one she knew." The same change was made on Apr, but

not apparently for E1 which reproduces both the original verb phrase and the inserted revision (198.11-13): Similarly, at R 200.9-10, the insertion "she said" was probably intended for the Hogarth printer, but Woolf confused the proofsets and made the change for Raverat instead. In both cases the transcription errors indicate that the Hogarth proofs were, in this stint, last in the series to be corrected, and further, that the Harcourt readings are more reliable in these instances.