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.

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.