"Nothing has really happened until it has been described ..."
I.
I have to admit, until very recently my knowledge of Gerald Duckworth was extremely limited. Essentially, I knew he published some of D. H. Lawrence's early work, including Sons and Lovers (1913), and that Lawrence thought him a decent chap.
But I didn't know that Duckworth also published books by Henry James and John Galsworthy. Nor did I know that his middle name - de l'Etang - was the surname of one of his mother's ancestors, Antoine de l'Etang, a page to Marie Antoinette; or that he died whilst on holiday in Milan, in 1937.
And I certainly didn't know that Gerald was accused by his much younger half-sister, Virginia, of molesting her as a child; a claim that Woolf first made in a speech at the Bloomsbury Memoir Club in 1920 and which has long been the subject of controversy within literary and feminist circles [1].
According to Woolf, Gerald physically picked her up one day, plonked her onto a table, put his hand under
her skirt, and then proceeded to fondle her genitals. To Virginia - who was only six years old at the time - this was a shocking incident; one which she never
forgot, even if she forgave Gerald and did not accuse him of any further violations (or indiscretions, as commentators who wish to trivialise this incident prefer to write).
Woolf provides a graphic description of what happened in a posthumously published piece of autobiographical writing:
"As I sat there he began to explore my body. I can remember the feel of his hand going under my clothes;
going firmly and steadily lower and lower, I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and
wriggled as his hand approached my private parts. But it did not stop. His hand explored my private parts
too." [2]
Of course, it may well be that Gerald regarded his younger sister more as an object of sexual curiosity, rather than sexual desire. And doubtless such things as this are common in family homes up and down the land. But, even so - perhaps due to the twelve-year age difference between the two parties - this incident makes for uncomfortable reading and it was certainly one that deeply affected Woolf.
Indeed, those far more knowledgeable about the impact of childhood sexual abuse than I argue that even a single incident such as this can have such powerful long-term consequences that it's impossible to fully understand Woolf's later life, as a woman and as an artist, without acknowledging what happened to her as a child at the hands of Gerald - and, indeed, his elder brother George, who was (allegedly) a far more serious sex pest ...
II.
According to Woolf, she and her sister were repeatedly abused over a period of many years by their half-brother George Duckworth. This abuse began when she was aged thirteen; Vanessa sixteen; and George twenty-eight.
Virginia would write of his violent passion and brutish behaviour and the implication was given that he had attempted to establish an incestuous relationship with her and Vanessa (although neither Woolf nor Bell ever accused him of rape, as such).
In '22 Hyde Park', she discloses how, one night, as she lay undressed and stretched out on her bed trying to sleep, George came creeping into her room. When she sat up and cried out he instructed her not to be frightened - and not to turn on the lights. Then, according to Woolf, George flung himself on the bed beside her and took her in his arms [3].
For George Duckworth's defenders, these allegations are not only unproven, but unfounded; some even describe them as far-fetched and suggest that Woolf concocted an imaginative drama out of little more than erotic horseplay, which, whilst not entirely innocent, was neither something to make a fuss about.
Ultimately, we have no way of knowing the truth of what happened: but I doubt very much that Woolf invented or fantasised the abuse. On the other hand, however, it's probably wise to retain a degree of skepticism concerning claims that are made without any supporting evidence (particularly claims made by imaginative artists who are often unreliable narrators of their own lives and prone to embroider actual events).
Notes
[1] Although
many Woolf scholars today don't question whether the abuse happened, disagreement
persists about the nature and extent of the abuse and what effect it may have had on the rest of her life. I think we can agree, however, that Woolf's speaking out on this subject was a courageous and highly unusal thing for a woman at that time to do.
[2] Quoted from Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, ed. by Jeanne Schulkind, (Sussex University Press, 1976).
This collection of posthumously-published autobiographical essays was first discovered in the papers of her husband, Leonard Woolf, and used by Quentin Bell in his biography of his aunt Virginia, published in 1972. In 1976, the essays were edited for publication by Jeanne Schulkind; a revised and enlarged second edition was published by the Hogarth Press in 1985; the most recent edition, introduced and revised by Hermione Lee, was published by Pimlico in 2022.
The title was a phrase used by Woolf to describe those rare moments (not necessarily positive or beneficial) in which an individual directly experiences reality, in contrast to the states of non-being which separate us from reality or serve to protect us from its tragic (or traumatic) nature. Arguably, an incident that scars the individual for life - such as a sexual assault in childhood - might be construed as just such a moment.
[3] This essay, '22 Hyde Park', can be found in Moments of Being, op cit.
Readers interested in learning more about this topic will find the following essay by Lucia Williams helpful: 'Virginia Woolf's History of Sexual
Victimization: A Case Study in Light
of Current Research', Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 10, (August 2014), pp. 1151-1164. Click here to read online.
