Woolf's Between the Acts and Orwell's 1984: Nazi Parallels

Introduction: Two Authors in the Shadow of War

Virginia Woolf's novel Between the Acts was her final published work. It would be reasonable for a reader who knows how she chose to end her life — by drowning herself in the River Ouse on March 28, 1941 — to suspect that she committed suicide in part because she was in great despair over the frightening possibility of the Nazis successfully invading, occupying, and destroying England.

Woolf wrote the novel in the midst of the London Blitz; her own house was bombed by German rockets fired across the English Channel. This deeply disturbed Woolf, who had suffered through periods of depression and mental anguish throughout her life. Add to her psychological difficulties the fact that things looked genuinely dark for the English, and life was very bleak for this sensitive, highly intelligent woman.

In painting a picture of England past and England in 1939, a reader might suspect that she was patriotically standing up for her country at a time when Hitler was putting a deadly squeeze on Europe like a boa constrictor coiling around helpless prey. There were subtle instances of foreshadowing — gentle techniques employed by Woolf that, upon close observation, offer a message about what the community was worrying about, in the same way that real communities no doubt pondered and fretted over the looming war in 1939.

It is interesting to imagine what life would have been like had Hitler managed to overrun the Allies and storm into England. Would Hitler have been able to install his extreme Nazi fascism and turn the country into something resembling the society in George Orwell's iconic Nineteen Eighty-Four? Would "Big Brother" have been watching the comings and goings of British people to see who might be plotting against the Third Reich? It seems likely indeed. In that context, Orwell's 1984 and Woolf's Between the Acts have parallels worth exploring, in the sense of their linkage through similar historical themes and events. The two novels are also starkly different in setting and in tone, which offers a dramatic juxtaposition.

Woolf's Between the Acts and the Anxiety of 1939

It is notable that Woolf died shortly after finishing her novel in 1941, and Orwell died in 1949, shortly after publishing 1984. Both Woolf and Orwell were greatly distressed by the Nazi menace — both having lived in Europe, in fear, during World War II — and both were justifiably sickened by the brutal Nazi slaughter of millions of people and the terrifying reality that Hitler had nearly all of Europe within his grasp. Both authors lived tragic lives, owing to illness (in Woolf's case, emotional illness), and both are now regarded as literary icons: respected, widely read, and enduringly relevant.

Though Woolf was obviously in great despair leading up to that March day in 1941 when she put on an overcoat, filled the pockets with large stones, and waded into the river, the very fact that she finished the novel might indicate to a student of WWII history that she had not sunk into total depression during the actual writing. At the very least, the positive nature of the plot suggests she held out hope during the writing that peace might prevail, and that the act of writing was perhaps therapeutic for her. That can be surmised because the novel encompassed a great deal of English history, which she loved, and the story took place over a condensed twenty-four-hour period during which nothing catastrophic happened to her fictional community.

Symbolism and Irony in the Village Pageant

The charming little community pageant that becomes a central element of Between the Acts creates a feeling of small-town innocence, even as war loomed on the horizon. Some of the spoken lines from the play were blown away by the wind before the audience could hear them — an interesting technique by the author, seemingly designed to create a mood of incomplete communication. When an audience sees a performer mouth a word but the word never reaches their ears, it is eerily disconcerting. Whatever words or phrases were carried off by the wind might have been important to the plot; missing any lines means things that should be heard are instead lost. There may be subtle symbolism in that communication gap: Woolf may have been trying to convey her innermost fears, only to find them lost before they could be heard or understood.

Some of the dialogue was also ironic, likely intentionally so. On page 82, there was a lull in the homespun drama — the stage was empty, and the audience waited patiently for something to happen. "Only the cows moved in the meadows; only the tick of the gramophone needle was heard. The tick, tick, tick seemed to hold them together, tranced. Nothing whatsoever appeared on stage." That "tick, tick, tick" would appear to be a metaphor for a bomb waiting to go off, or for a nation waiting to find out when the Germans would strike next — even though the novel avoids any direct reference to the Nazis.

After the machine's needle continued to broadcast the "tick, tick, tick" sound, old Oliver whispered, "Marking time," and Lucy murmured, "Which don't exist for us. We've only the present." That exchange appears to send a subtle literary message: since the future was unknown, one might as well enjoy the present. Isa "fidgeted and her bare brown arms went nervously to her head. She half turned in her seat." The future, she seemed to say, would only disturb the present.

On page 92, an actress in the play is thought to be sick, and then, after the cast crowds around her, she is found dead. "She fell back lifeless. The crowd drew away. Peace, let her pass. Peace was the third emotion. Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life…"

On page 140, words are again snatched from the air by the wind and drowned out by the rustle of leaves: "Then the wind rose, and in the rustle of the leaves even the great words became inaudible; and the audience sat staring at the villagers, whose mouths opened, but no sound came."

Woolf's skill at creating sweet, subtle irony — given the realities of life in 1939 England, with everyone yearning for peace — is again on display. A cow had lost her calf at just about the time the players had lost their voices and the audience had lost the thread of the play. But "in the very nick of time," the cow lifted her "moon-eyed head and bellowed." No wind gust blew that bellow away. As cows are prone to do, others followed: "All the great moon-eyed heads laid themselves back. From cow after cow came the same yearning bellow. The whole world was filled with dumb yearning," Woolf wrote, forging a literary connection between human and bovine longing.

The cows then became the show. They "annihilated the gap" — an arresting choice of words — and "bridged the distance; filled the emptiness and continued the emotion." Woolf added, "It was the primeval voice sounding loud in the ear of the present moment." On page 141, the cows stopped their yearning and lowered their heads, "and began browsing. Simultaneously the audience lowered their heads and read their programs." And they shall be led by a herd of cattle.

Conclusion: Literature Against Fascism

Notwithstanding her death, Woolf's novel will flow on the currents of deep literature forever. Her reasons for taking her life are speculative, and while her motives for writing Between the Acts are not important in terms of the value of the work, they do come into play given the ugly background to her life at that time — Hitler's menacing rockets and the Nazi threat. The good news for the British is that no Orwellian nightmare was ever perpetrated upon them, and the hatred embodied in both Orwell's novel and in the Nazi strategy is safely stowed away in history.

Annotated Bibliography

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.

Orwell's iconic novel is a powerful description of what utopia would look like if it were reversed and evil became the overriding force. Life in his oligarchic society is defined by constant war, Big Brother surveillance, paranoia, and the perfection of dark propaganda. The novel is a classic example of science fiction with a sustained social science theme, and it portends — in no uncertain terms — what life will look like if any society surrenders to a repressive, totalitarian fascism.

Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941.

Virginia Woolf's novel was written during World War II, and its story was shaped in part by her fear of the looming war across the English Channel. She creates a pageant within the story as a device to depict the history of English people past and present, and to develop her characters. The story contains hidden meanings — not an unusual tactic in literary fiction — and because the war was in progress, the reader can detect the author's anxiety through the behaviors of her characters.