THIS STUDY is animated by two contrary, yet intimately related, tropes:
marriage and annexation. While Virginia Woolf often represents real mar-
riages as microcosmic forms of colonization, tyranny, or warmongering,
marriage as a metaphor in the writings of both Virginia and Leonard Woolf
always stands for the opposite: a dialogue, in which neither subjectivity
drowns out the other and both partners thrive. Their own marriage negoti-
ated the dangers of inbuilt hierarchy through self-awareness on both sides,
always leaning toward the metaphor and away from the traditionally con-
ceived actuality.

My focus on the relationship of Virginia and Leonard Woolf for the
greater part of the chapters that follow emphasizes the intersubjective prin-
ciple in Virginia Woolf's prose and links it with larger sociopolitical ques-
tions about belonging and exclusion. While this study gives primary atten-
tion to analysis of Virginia Woolf's writings, my new readings of her works
depend on an understanding of both the irritation and the inspiration pro-
vided by Leonard Woolf (with “irritation” understood as creative and intel-
lectual restlessness rather than malaise). Although Virginia's feminist be-
liefs and her shrewd observations of gender relations under the rule of
patriarchy were spawned early in life, her husband's ardent political en-
gagements created fertile ground for their growth and expression. More
provocatively, her alliance to an impecunious Jew with the highest connec-
tions in British academe and politics multiplied and illuminated the contra-
dictions in her own identity and politics. Leonard Woolf, at the time of
their marriage in 1912, was a former colonial administrator turned fervent
anti-imperialist, an active socialist engaged particularly with feminist ques-
tions within the British Labour movement, and a theorist of international
relations whose work contributed directly to the formation of the League
of Nations. Most compelling for my particular perspective is his divided
sense of ethnic and class identity: an assimilated Jew, he fluctuated between
fierce pride in his heritage and a repudiation of it—a repudiation partially
expressed in his gravitation toward Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury. Noth-
ing was simple in this story, however, and fundamental to my examination
of the relationship and writings of the Woolfs is the idea that Leonard
Woolf brought to the marriage, but also to the wider currents of literary

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