My sister loves to find a bargain and a few weeks before Christmas she came across an e-book on sale that she knew I would like and gifted it to me. I am not quite halfway through Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman by Ruth Gruber, and I am enjoying it very much.
The book is sort of two books in one, a bit of biography in the first half and a Ph.D dissertation that was previously published as a book on its own in the second half. I am in the midst of the dissertation, which is extremely good and made even more amazing because it was written when Gruber was only 20. More on that in a bit.
This hybrid book came about in 2004 when Gruber’s assistant was digging through an old file cabinet and found two letters from Virginia Woolf in the back of it. Gruber, currently aged 101 and a successful journalist, photographer and writer, had forgotten about the letters and they sent her down memory lane. Gruber’s Russian Jewish immigrant parents encouraged her to get a higher education. In 1927 at the age of fifteen, she graduated from New york University. At eighteen she won a postgraduate fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to be followed up a year later with a fellowship from the Institute of International Education to study in Cologne, Germany where she was to study German philosophy, Modern English literature and art history.
Not long after Gruber began her studies in Cologne, one of her literature professors told her that he wanted her to get a Ph.D. and to write her dissertation on Virginia Woolf. He loved Woolf’s writing and Gruber was his only student who, as an American, knew English well enough to read and analyze Woolf’s writing. But Gruber’s fellowship was not renewable and she only had a year to do what usually takes two or three years. But she did it and in 1932 at the age of twenty became the youngest student to receive a Ph.D.
A year later she was informed by her former professor that Tauchnitz, the same press that published Woolf’s books (in English) in Germany, wanted to publish Gruber’s dissertation. When the book was published, Gruber boldly sent a copy of it to Woolf and then followed up a few months later to ask if she had read it and what she had thought!
There was a bit more correspondence with Woolf, nothing of momentous import. What it all added up to though was Gruber eventually getting to have tea with Virginia and Leonard in May 1935. Her visit lasted a half an hour and Gruber was in heaven meeting her idol. They talked mostly about Hitler and Germany and Leonard was really interested in the trip Gruber had taken to the Russian Arctic. Gruber thought it all went splendidly.
And then, in 1989, Gruber discovered that the New York Public Library owned Woolf’s diaries and letters. She went and took a look. Mistake! She discovered what Woolf really thought of her. Even though Gruber is American and has no German ancestry, Woolf refers to her always as a “German woman” and in a letter to Julian written before she went to tea to meet Gruber, she wrote, “I must now go and see an importunate and unfortunate Gerwoman.” And in her diary on that same day she calls Gruber a “pure have yer.”
Gruber eventually had to write to Nigel Nicolson to ask if he knew what that meant. Nicoloson sent a letter saying it meant a task forced on one which needs to be done and apologized, saying that it was an example of one of the things he always “deplored about Virginia, her cattiness, contempt for almost everyone who were not her friends, an occasional touch of anti-Semitism, her snobbishness and jealousy.”
Can you imagine, being twenty-two, meeting Woolf, thinking it went really well and holding that glorious memory for decades only to then find out that Woolf thought you a tedious obligation? I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to even look myself up in her diary and letters, sometimes it is better not to know! But it is typical Woolf. I mean, when Gruber was describing what a wonderful meeting she had had with Woolf I thought, wow, maybe she wasn’t as sarcastic and mean as I thought she was. Nope. And when Gruber found out the truth I chuckled and thought, “yeah, and you were a smart, interesting young woman, I’d hate to think what she would have written about the likes of me, a fawning groupie!”
This biographical portion of the book was great fun to read. Gruber has a lot that she could brag about but she doesn’t, she just lays out her accomplishments in a matter-of-fact way as if they were things that happened to everyone every day. And even though it turned out Woolf didn’t think all that highly of her, Gruber has taken it in stride.
I’ll be sure to tell you about the dissertation when I have finished reading it. Thus far I can say it is incredibly mature and an admirable feminist analysis before feminist criticism was even really being done.
What an interesting discovery! I suppose writers are often as difficult-to-like in their private lives and attitudes as it seems Virginia Woolf could sometimes be. I’m glad that Ruth Gruber took it in her stride.
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Just has a quick peek at Wikipedia about Ruth Gruber – she certainly achieved a lot, including her being the youngest person ever to get a doctorate. The entry tells us that she had an “extensive” relationship with Virginia Woolf which hardly seems to fit the facts.
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Ian, Gruber was rather angry when she first discovered what Woolf had written about her but I think she came to understand that Woolf was like that to everybody and now doesn’t let it bother her. I think the wikipedia entry exaggerates her relationship with Woolf. By Gruber’s own account it was not extensive, just a handful of letters and a 30 minute visit.
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What an amazing woman Gruber sounds! And what a cow Woolf was!! I guess this is the long process of natural justice at work – we admire Ruth Gruber for her talent and nice character and get to deplore Woolf for her short-sighted snobbiness!
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Litlove, doesn’t Gruber sound amazing? She would be someone to meet, i bet she has all kinds of good stories. What always surprises me about Woolf is how she is anti-semitic and yet married a Jew. She must somehow have made Leonard an exception but I wonder how that made Leonard feel? I’ll have to read more about him sometime to find out!
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This sounds fascinating! & there’s no way I’d have wanted to meet Woolf, much less read her impressions of me, so Gruber is a braver woman than I. 😉
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Eva, Gruber marvels at her own audacity in sending Woolf her book and in pursuing a meeting with her. Since we have the benefit of hindsight and biography we know how mean Woolf could be but Gruber didn’t until long after the fact so that probably helped on the bravery front!
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All the time I was reading this post I was thinking, ‘I hope Gruber didn’t find out what Woolf thought of her’ but you’re right she was like this with most people. I seem to remember May Sarton got pretty short shift as well and she could be catty about those she did count as friends as well. Some of the things she says about Katherine Mansfield were terrible.
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Alex, heh, I know, I was surprised it took as long as it did for Gruber to find out what Woolf was really like. Oh yes, May Sarton got snubbed too. Woolf said some horrible things about Mansfield but when Mansfield died, at least for a little while, Woolf was genuinely sorry for it because she thought competing with Mansfield made her a better writer.
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What a really interesting story! I wonder if Woolf liked anyone at all? I would say ‘admired anyone’, but I know better! Too bad about that, but Gruber sounds quite impressive in her own right!
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Danielle, isn’t it great? I wonder sometimes how Woolf even managed to have any friends. She must have liked and been nice to at least a few people.
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That would be so lowering! What a cat Virginia Woolf was. But what a fabulous incident to have had, y’know?
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Carrie, I know right? Just to be able to say you got to have tea with Woolf even if she didn’t like you is pretty special.
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You spun a great story in your post, that was fun! But, oh, the poor woman. While I love and adore Woolf’s writing, I am glad I will never meet her. There’s a line in Jacob’s Room where she mocks clergymen’s sons from the Midlands, studying at Oxford. C’est moi! Oh, Virginia…
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Simon, thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! I don’t anyone was ever safe from Woolf, so at least if we had ever met her we’d be in good company 🙂
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I know next to nothing of Woolf and her wrtings. Just yesterday I brought home a book from the library (‘On Being Ill’). When I tuck into this book I’ll be aware of how curt she could be writing about people. Gruber sounds like a woman to admire.
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Vanessa, in her personal life Woolf is notorious for being catty. Her public writing though, you’d never know it. On Being Ill is a marvelous essay. Woolf darts all over the place and it is so seamless you are halfway through the page before you realize she is talking about something else entirely different than on the previous page. Enjoy!
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Good to know–thank you!
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A “pure have yer”. Oh dear. You’d want to be comfortable in your own skin when you found something like that wouldn’t you. Nigel Nicolson’s response was interesting. He had to be honest, really, about its meaning because she’d find out from someone, but it was nice that he added his own perspective on Woolf.
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whisperinggums, oh yes, one would have to be either completely oblivious or extremely self-assured. I thought it kind and interesting that Nicholson was so apologetic in his letter. He obviously understands how people who met Woolf, especially young writers, admired her and wanted to be liked.
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Yes … I don’t think I’d have survived!
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Your blog confirmed something I suspected, that is, Ms Woolf was an intellectual snob. Such a shame. She should have read The Rainbow Fish because that may have made all the difference to her outlook.
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Diane, oh yes, Woolf was indeed a snob. I can laugh at it from a distance but I am sure if I had been on the receiving end of it I wouldn’t think it so funny. Still, she was a brilliant writer and if you were lucky enough to be among her inner circle she could be quite generous.
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Glad to find here that Ruth Gruber’s 1930’s thesis on Virginia Woolf, and her 2005 republication of it with the letters she exchanged with Woolf, has been read so thoughtfully on this blog. I happen to have been Ruth’s editor for six of her books, including the Woolf book. For those interested in reading about on Gruber and Woolf, I invite you to follow this link, for a piece I wrote on them. http://bit.ly/J9xt0q
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