Virginia had cared for both Thoby and Vanessa during their illnesses, and she channeled her feelings of frustration, boredom, and helplessness into the final chapters of The Voyage Out. There is perhaps no better depiction of the debilitating cycle of hope and despair one experiences while watching a loved one die than Terence’s agonizing vigil with Rachel.

Vanessa responded to Thoby’s death by marrying one of his closest friends, the painter and critic Clive Bell — an act that left Woolf feeling abandoned and betrayed. Bloomsbury responded by drawing closer together and bringing in new members like E. M. Forster, Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry. Virginia responded not with a breakdown but with a hardening of spirit and a resolution to honor Thoby’s memory. But after weathering the loss of four family members in ten years she had begun to feel that death was an unshakeable companion.

It is in this environment, then, that Woolf began work on her first novel. The writing went slowly, in part because of Woolf’s high expectations and her shifting views of love, marriage, and women’s position in society. During the several years of writing, Woolf received four marriage proposals, had an extended flirtation with her brother-in-law Clive Bell, volunteered with the suffrage movement, and watched as her sister Vanessa gave birth to two children. Naturally, Woolf’s approach to her heroine changed as her own identity and opinions altered. As she revised the novel, Woolf was strongly influenced by Roger Fry and the “post-impressionist” exhibition he was organizing in London in 1910. The public was not yet ready for Matisse or Picasso, but Fry’s argument for a movement away from representational art to something more expressive and original inspired Woolf. She tried to incorporate his ideas into her work. Her method became more visually stylized, inward, and symbolist. Finally, after five years and at least seven drafts, she finished her first novel, now titled The Voyage Out.

In an essay on Jane Austen, Woolf wrote, “the second-rate works of a great writer are worth reading because they offer the best criticism of his masterpieces” (The Common Reader, p. 137). The Voyage Out is by no means second-rate; it lacks, however, the innovation, audacity, and fluidity of Woolf’s later masterpieces. The contrast in style and execution between Woolf’s first novel and her more mature work is not surprising, but it is revealing and illustrates where Woolf had difficulties, what she left behind, and what she fought to discover. Where later she was instinctive and economical, rendering a scene or a character in a few deft strokes, here Woolf is somewhat redundant and discursive, belaboring her themes and overstuffing her story. Where later she ingeniously forged a new form, using language and overlapping realities to simulate consciousness, here she is cautious, sticking to the beaten path of a conventional plot. Despite these limitations, The Voyage Out remains a haunting and brilliant novel about a young woman’s search for identity and love. It is also a unique window into Woolf’s unconscious.

The novel opens with a married couple, the Ambroses, making their way down a path along London’s Embankment to board a ship headed for South America. Ridley, the husband, is all business, but his wife, Helen, is overcome by grief for the children she has left behind. Ridley tries to console Helen, “but she show[s] no signs of admitting him” (pp. 5-6) and continues to sob while he turns away.

Already, before the story has barely begun, Woolf shows the chasm that exists between two supposedly intimate people, a husband and a wife. This disconnection initiates one of the central themes of the novel — the notion that extreme emotions are comprehendible only to their possessor, and that communication, however desirable, is limited.

Once Helen and Ridley reach their ship, the Euphrosyne, they are greeted by Rachel, their niece and the daughter of the captain, and by Mr. Pepper, an elderly scholar and a curmudgeon. The Ambroses’ arrival is a harbinger of sorts, as it triggers four mentions of death: first, when the Ambroses note the dangerous stairs; second, when Mr. Pepper talks about rheumatism; and last, when Ridley and Mr. Pepper discuss the deaths of two mutual acquaintances. Indeed, as the novel progresses the body count only grows; we hear about dead pets, dead explorers, dead fathers, dead mothers, dead poets, death from childbirth, and the suicide of a maid.