“I TOOK UP THE INKPOT…” (VIRGINIA WOOLF)

Scroll down to see how this piece looks in a room

In 1931, Virginia Woolf gave a speech at a branch of the National Society for Women’s Service. A truncated version of that speech, entitled “Professions for Women,” was published after her death. In it, she writes about “the Angel in the House,” an “intensely sympathetic,” “utterly unselfish” socially imposed idea of a woman, who “sacrificed herself daily,” who was “pure.” She encounters this spectre when she writes. The “angel” whispers to her to fall in line with the idea of womanhood, to “never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own,” effectively restraining Woolf’s own volition and creativity. Woolf then writes, “whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her.”

I relate to this experience profoundly, and as I started making this piece, I felt like visually representing the flung inkpot, but also the feeling of flinging the inkpot. Woolf remarks that it is difficult to kill what isn’t real, since the spectre returns to haunt her. As is her way, she ends her story pensively and thoughtfully: “The Angel was dead; what then remained? You may say that what remained was a simple and common object--a young woman in a bedroom with an inkpot. In other words, now that she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah, but what is "herself"? I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.”

Read more about it here.

36h x 30w x 0.75d (inches); ink and acrylic on wood-backed canvas