Virginia Woolf is a modernist writer, critic and essayist. Employing stream of consciousness technique, she has portrayed the mental conflicts of her characters. In additions to her novels, she has extensively written on literature, gender and literary criticism. In this essay, she expresses her idea of reading and the constructive role of readers in producing quality literature.She begins the essay by discussing the relevance of the question mark in the title. She assures the reader that she is not going to prescribe any single mode of reading books and the question is to her as much as it is to the reader. She underlines the freedom of the reader and suggests that readers have to follow their own instincts, use their own reason and come to their own conclusion. She also warns readers that they should not allow any authorities to direct them how to read. In this essay she shares her observations on reading books.
The first task of readers is to create an inclusive strategy to cater to the plurality of books. This should enable the reader to approach books written in all languages by men and women of all tempers, races and ages. Books have, like humans, classes such as fiction, biography, poetry etc... This requires readers to be sensitive of each of these classes and take from each what it is right.
Woolf identifies certain preconceptions that prevent readers from getting the best of books. Here are the four recommendations she offers. The first one is to banish all misconception while we read. The second is not to dictate to the author; one has to be a fellow worker and accomplice of the author to get the real worth of a book. The third is not to criticise at first; though criticism is a part of reading, criticising a writer in the beginning prevent us from a getting the fullest possible value of the book. The fourth one is to keep the mind as widely as possible.
The best way to appreciate an author is to write. When we attempt to write our experience into a paper, we get an insight into the process of writing. Writing is to experiment with words and certain impressions of our experience will get subdued, emphasised and lost in the act of writing. Once we understand the difficulties involved in writing, it is the right time to open great novels before us. Now we appreciate better the writings of novelists such as Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. While Defoe employs realistic narrative in which fact and the order of fact is enough, Austen portrays the drawing room conversations of the upper class characters. Hardy focuses on the darker aspects of human mind. Though these three writers narrate entirely different worlds, they follow the laws of their own perspectives and they never confuse the reader.
Reading is a life changing event! When we approach different writers and their worlds, we are forced to change our views on life. Every book requires the reader to keep his/her perspective changing. Effective reading is possible only if the reader has fineness of perception and boldness of imagination.
In this part of the essay, Woolf takes up the issue of reading biographies and autobiographies. She does not ignore these books simply because they are not works of art. She testifies that these books satisfy the curiosity of the reader on the lives of great men. They narrate the daily affairs of these men; their toiling, failing, succeeding, eating, hating, and loving until they die. They offer us interesting things about the life of the past. They also help us to refresh and exercise our own creative powers.
She then moves on to describe the experience of rubbish reading. She considers them as disfigured stories and these books offer readers facts, which are inferior to fiction. She opines that readers get exhausted of these books and this enables them to enjoy the greater abstractedness and purer truth of fiction. This also prepares the ground for reading poetry. According to Woolf, the time to read poetry is the moment when readers are almost able to write it.
In this part, Woolf shares her experience of reading poetry. According to her, the impacts of reading poetry are so hard and direct that no other sensation leaves its imprint on our mind then. She calls ‘poet as our contemporary’ because poem leaves such a sensation that we are literally unable to feel anything except the poem. Gradually, the poem spreads in wider rings through our mind and creates echoes and reflections. Poets are endowed with the power to convert us as actors and spectators. Poem condenses, widens and states once forever.
Reading involves two steps. The first one is to receive impressions with the utmost understanding and the second is to pass judgement on the works we have read. Once we have absorbed the impression of the book with utmost understanding, we have to wait till the immediate sensation passes and book return to us for a second time. At this stage, which is the second, we have to analyse the work critically. Woolf’s method of analysing literature involves comparison of each new book with the greatest of its kind. For example, if we are reading a new novel, we have to compare this with the best novels in that literature and weigh and measure the qualities of the new work. This mode of assessment requires of critical readers to keep their personal taste intact and identify quantities that group books together. After grouping, the reader has to derive rules from the shared features of these books that bring order into the perception of the reader. One is to be cautious of the rules formed thus, as these rules are to be perpetually broken by contact with books.
There are certain prerequisites to make comparison of new literary works with that of the best in the canon. The first one is wide reading; a critical reader has to pass judgement on a new book and this is possible only if s/he can compare it with the best of that genre. Only a reader with wide reading of literature can evaluate the strengths and weakness of the new work. The second one is to have enough understanding; if the reader is not sensible enough to understand the diverse worlds writers are portraying, s/he cannot pass judgements. In addition to these, a critical reader is to be imaginative, insightful and of high learning.
This mode of analysis is double fold; on one hand it gives importance to individual perception and on the other, it involves forming rules that are derived from the shared features of the best works. She suggests that criticism of Coleridge, Dryden and Johnson and the sayings of poets can help us to form the rules if we approach them with our own questions and suggestions. According to Woolf, a critic is supposed to be imaginative, insightful and able to pass judgement and it is often difficult for readers to possess all these traits. She points at the failure of critics to evaluate books properly as huge numbers of books are getting published every year. She also underlines the constructive role of readers in creating quality literature as readers with their considerate and critical response can brighten the world of the author.
She concludes the essay by stating that reading is an end in itself.
