Volume 37, Number 4 · March 15, 1990
Who's Afraid for Virginia Woolf?
By Quentin Bell
Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work
by Louise DeSalvo
Ballantine, 372 pp., $10.95 (paper)
This is a grim story of sexual abuse, of the persecution of the innocent, of the lasting damage done to children who might never quite recover from the sins of others, and especially of their parents. It should not be imagined that there is anything titillating in this account of the misdemeanors of a century ago; the popularity of this book does not result from anything lascivious in its treatment of ancient lusts and lubricity. Professor DeSalvo comes to her task with becoming solemnity and in a disinfected spirit. Gravely she addresses the guilty sinners of that fin de siècle with the seriousness of a cleaner, better age, armed with statistics, a library of impressive works of reference and a sense which is not so much sedate as funereal; she can move her readers to indignant tears, also, it must be said, to hoots of laughter.
Review, 3972 words
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