The context of the war years, which required many of those who lived through them to maintain a protective illusion of normality whose fragility was constantly threatened, provide an initial means of grasping the coexistence of perfect-yet-strange illusion with the invasion of utter barbarity. The historical moments of terrifying suspense-of summer 1939 in which Between the Acts is set, of 1940 in which it was written, and of 1941 which saw its posthumous publication-play a great part in understanding how Woolf’s conveyance of normality requires an obliteration of troublesome events so vigorous that the ‘reality’ from which these are banished is saturated with the thoroughly uncanny effect of their disappearance. Unreal already, in its acute simplicity and banality, it is a world which causes one to wonder from the start, despite the petty, fleeting rivalries and tensions which emerge and fade between protagonists, and the casual, passing references to war, how life can unfold in so uncomplicated a manner. The world of Pointz Hall, the homely house, encapsulated within twenty-four hours, from one summer’s evening to the next, constitutes a moment separated in time and space from the maelstrom of events which surround it, and in which there is tea on the lawn, and talk of the weather, music, a pageant and cows in the meadow. The argument that follows seeks to highlight the ways in which her perceived wholeness of the text goes hand in glove with the effect of strange illusion which emerges from a reading of Between the Acts, and that this wholeness remains inextricably linked with the randomness and fragmentation which is equally associated with the novel’s impact. Reality transposed in its imperfections, in shreds and patches, often lies behind the uncanny, sometimes traumatic sensations that dislocate the world of Woolf’s characters the quest to make the moment whole, however, could be argued as strangeness in its absolute form.ĢFor Woolf, it was her final work, Between the Acts that most fully achieved the fictional portrayal of the quintessential reality she sought. 1 See for example Sophie Marret (2002) Anne-Marie Smith-Di Biasio (2010).ġStrangeness or estrangement in the fiction of Woolf is a concept linking key elements which span her texts, and which have been perceptively highlighted by her critical readership: 1 dislocation of time and space, randomness, dispersion, interruption, death and its impact, constitute one select thematic grouping of such elements a converse set of preoccupations including fantasy, unity, ‘one-making’ and the conveyance of a quintessence of reality, pits itself against the scraps and fragments of recounted experience but is likewise a crucial part of the strange illusion which emerges at significant moments in the pages of Woolf.

Woolf between the acts