Virginia Woolf's "The Legacy"

Author(s): Ann Lavine

Source: The English Journal, Vol. 75, No. 2 (Feb., 1986), pp. 74-78
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
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A New Contributor

Virginia Woolf
"The

Legacy"

Ann Lavine
The first time I taught Virginia Woolf's short story
"The Legacy" I knew I had found a good way to
introduce Woolf to high school students. Immediately after we finished the story, the class was
divided into two distinct groups--one group sympathized with one of the two main characters and
viewed the other as villainous while the second
group espoused the reverse. I knew we were on
our way to comprehending one of Woolf's underlying beliefs about fiction, namely, that it should
not present reality as absolute and neatly packageable but rather it should try to present it as it is
subjectively experienced by individuals. In her
essay "Modern Fiction," Woolf explains that "life
is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically
arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning
of consciousness to the end" (Woolf, 1967, p. 106).
The task of the writer, according to Woolf, is to
render this reality in all its "aberration and complexity" (Woolf, 1967, p. 106); our task as readers
is not to look simply for symmetrically arranged
gig-lamps.
"The Legacy" is told entirely from the perspective of Gilbert Clandon, a somewhat successful
politician whose wife Angela has recently died. As
the story opens, Gilbert is perplexed about Angela's actions before her accidental death. She had
arranged small gifts for all of her friends almost
as if she knew she were going to die. No gift is left
expressly for Gilbert, but he thinks she may have
intended him to have the fifteen-volume diary she
kept during their marriage. Gilbert's thoughts are
interrupted by the arrival of Sissy Miller, Angela's
long-time friend and secretary. Visibly upset, Sissy

74

accepts the brooch Angela intended for her but

declines the financial assistance Gilbert extends,
instead offering him help if he should need it.
After Sissy's departure, Gilbert begins to read
Angela's diary. He randomly picks up volumes
from the beginning of their marriage and is
pleased to see all the referencesto himself and his
career. As he progresses through the volumes he
notes that his name appears less frequentlywhile
the initials B. M. enter and occur more and more
frequently. As he reads, he learns that B. M.
comes from the lower classes, discussed politics
with Angela, and visits her while she is alone. In
the final volumeGilbertreads that B. M. requests
some behaviorfrom Angela which she is not willing to do. Near the end of the diary Angela writes,
"He threatened that if I did not .... " but then
the remainderof the page is crossed out. Gilbert
assumes B. M. asked Angela to become his mistress. He remembers that Sissy's brother died
unexpectedly only a few weeks before Angela's
death and calls Sissy to confirm B. M.'s identity.
The story ends then with Gilbert telling us that
"he had received his legacy.She had told him the
truth. She had stepped off the kerb to rejoin her
lover.She had stepped off the kerbto escape from
him."
The group of students who believed Gilbert
had been wronged saw Angela as deceitful and
adulterousand Gilbert as loyal and generous. In
contrast, the students who sympathized with
Angela viewedGilbertas patronizingand self-centered. Furthermore, they were convinced that
Angela was forced to find intimacy elsewhere. I
wouldlike not only to propose a third wayof read-

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ing "The Legacy"but also to suggest that the multiple interpretationswere intended and that they
contributeto the overall meaning of the story.
A strong case was made by the students who
believedthat Gilbertwas a good husbandwho was
wrongedby an adulterouswife. To begin with, the
story is told from his perspective and as readers
we have been conditioned to trust and like our
narrators. One generally assumes the truth is
being spoken unless evidence proves otherwise,
and Gilbert simply tells us they were happy and
had a sound marriage.Likewise,we know he was
a good provider,often buying her small gifts, taking her out to dinner, and vacationingwith her in
Europe. He tells us that they rarely argued and
that he was extremely proud to have her as his
wife. We see his kindness when he offers money
to Sissy and also learn that he allowed Angela to
do some volunteer work outside of the home. In
the early volumes of Angela's diary, we see that
she is completely enamored of Gilbert, that she
regrets that she cannot give him a son, and that
she is more than happy to perform the duties of
a politician's wife. Into this rosy picture comes
B. M. who fills Angela'shead with strange notions
and apparently threatens suicide if she does not
take him as her lover.Since B. M. and Angela kill
themselveswithin two weeks of each other,Gilbert
is left with the realization that his wife has
betrayedhim-or wanted to.
The second group of studentswere not as trusting of Gilbert's perceptions as the first group.
They began to doubt his judgments by the second
paragraph when Gilbert wonders how his wife
could have foreseen her own accidental death;
never does he suspect that the death may have
been premeditated. In fact, he blames Angela's
death on her lackof thought, noting that "if only
she had stopped one moment, and had thought
what she was doing, she would be alive now."As
the story progresses, students noted that this attitude is not atypical for Gilbert; he consistently
views his wife as intellectuallyinferior and childlike. While reminiscingabout their trip to Venice,
he notes that "she was still such a child" and that
he enjoyed travelling with her because "she was so
eager to learn." He remembers that she would say
she was "so terribly ignorant," but he considers
that "one of her charms." When he reads in her
diary about her political discussions with B. M.,
he remarks, "If only she had discussed the matter

with him, instead of puzzling her poor little head

about questions that were much too difficult for
her to understand!"And while Gilbert acknowledges her assistance to him with his career, he
remarks that her day-to-day existence was only
made up of "littletrifles."
These students also noted that Gilbert is
patronizing toward women in general. His attitudes towardSissyMillerindicate that he does not
view Angela simply as a particular case but that
he perceives all women as inferior. With Sissy
Miller, however, Gilbert also categorizes her
according to her class. He says that "she was
scarcelydistinguishablefrom any other womanof
her kind. There were thousandsof Sissy Millersdrab little womenin blackcarryingattachecases."
Along with perceiving women as helpmates to
men and their intellectual inferiors, Gilbert sees
them as sexual objects and adornments. After
acknowledging that "he had always been very
proud to be her husband,"he admitsthat it is only
because of Angela'sbeauty. He is merelyproud of
being able to say,"Sheis the loveliestwomanhere!"
when they dine out. Further evidence of Gilbert's
pompous attitudes toward women occurs when
Sissy offers Gilbert help, "lookingstraight at him
for the first time." Gilbertasks himself, "Couldit
be that during all those years when he had
scarcelynoticed her, she, as the novelistssay, had
entertaineda passionfor him?"The one time Sissy
emerges in his perception from the "thousands... of drab little women"and approaches
him as an individualand as an equal, he interprets
her offer as a sexual advance, never permitting
her outside of the female stereotype she occupies
in his mind.
The students also pointed to indications that
Gilbert is self-centeredand materialistic.He confesses that "he could not help admitting that he
was still, as the looking-glassshowed him, a very
distinguishedman," and as the referencesto him
in Angela's diary decrease, he admits that "his
interest slackened."When he discoversthat B. M.
has been to dine while he was engaged elsewhere,
he only remembers "his own speech" that night
and not whether Angela acted differently or their
rooms showed signs of a visit. Evidence of Gilbert's
materialism is suggested by his belief that the
brooch Angela leaves for Sissy is a "rather incongruous gift," a more appropriate one being "a sum
of money or even the typewriter." Likewise, his

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75

idea of help for Sissy takes the form of financial

assistance only.
Although students are unlikely to perceive this
distinction, those familiar with Woolf's writings
will note that Gilbert, far from being the kind
husband he envisions himself to be, is rather a
good example of the patriarch Woolf abhors so
much. She explains in A Room of One's Own that
men like Gilbert maintain their belief in their own
"innate superiority" by "feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are
by nature inferior. . . . It must indeed be one of
the chief sources of their power." Furthermore,
Woolf sees a connection between Gilbert's dominant position in the marriage and his dominant
position in society. Woolf makes Gilbert a husband
and a politician much like Charlotte Perkins Gilman makes John in "The Yellow Wallpaper" a husband and a doctor. As Beverly Ann Schlack in
"Fathers in General: The Patriarchy in Virginia
Woolf's Fiction" explains:

act of writing for Woolf was an act of disobedience. In "Thinking Back Through Our Mothers"
Jane Marcus explains that Woolf
felt that writing was a conspiracyagainst the state,
an act of aggressionagainstthe powerful,the willful
breaking of a treaty of silence the oppressed had
made with their masters to ensure survival.... If
language was the privatepropertyof the patriarchs,
to "trespass"on it was an act of usurpation(p. 1).

From Gilbert we learn that Angela never allowed

him to read her diary and that their only arguments occurred because of this refusal. Even at
the beginning of their marriage then, when
Angela was at her most dutiful, she kept a small
part of her existence separate from him. And
since Gilbert only first reads the diary six weeks
after her death and very casually at that, one can
infer that he was less interested in the content than
in the fact that she did not devote herself entirely
to him.
The content of Angela's diary depicts her growdissatisfaction with the marriage. At first the
For Woolf the authoritarianstate is the patriarchal ing
show her enjoyment and gratification with
volumes
family extended. In the larger public world, the
wife. For example, she writes,
Gilbert's
tyrants simply mass together into business and being
men
Be
doctors,
clerics,
down the applause was terrific.
Gilbert
sat
"When
professions. they professors,
of commerce,lawyers,politicians,or policemen,they The whole audience rose and
sang: 'For he's ajolly
are instrumentsof the partriarchy.(p. 58)
I
was
fellow.'
quite overcome," and then
good
"How
Schlack continues, "We need not wait for the observes,
proud I am to be his wife!" Later
the
fact that Gilbert is becoming
volumes
reflect
explicitly bitter anger of Three Guineas to see that
in his work" and that
absorbed
more
and
"more
Woolf had always had a dark vision of connections
alone. We learn that
left
is
between manhood and patriotism, politics, and Angela
increasingly
while
she
regrets'not being able to have a child,
war" (p. 70).
Once we recognize Gilbert as a Woolfian patri- Gilbert never regrets it because "life had been so
arch and realize how he perceives women, it is no full, so rich" for him. Her loneliness and sense of
longer possible to accept his portrayal of Angela usefulness reach the point at which she asks Gilwithout question. Woolf writes that when women bert for permission to do some volunteer work in
are portrayed by men, they are "almost without a poor district of London. She is afraid to ask him
shown in their relation to men" the diary makes clear because "it seemed selfish
exception...
to bother him with [her] own affairs," and Gilbert
(Room,p. 86). She continues:
remembers that "she had told him that she felt so
And how small a part of a woman'slife is that; and
so useless. She wished to have some work of
how little can a man know even of that when he idle,
own."
her
Angela's references to B. M. occur after
observes it through the black or rosy spectacles
she begins her volunteer work. We learn that at
which sex puts upon his nose. Hence, perhaps...
the astonishingextremes of beauty and horror; her first she has an adversarial relationship with him.
alternationsbetween heavenlygoodness and hellish "Had a heated argument about socialism with
depravity.
B. M." and "B. M. made a violent attack upon the
Gilbert's categories of dutiful wife and adulterous upper classes .... I walked back after the meeting
with B. M. and tried to convince him. But he is so
woman no longer suffice for us.
Fortunately, Angela is not without a voice in the narrow-minded." B. M. and Angela became more
story-she leaves behind a fifteen volume diary. than intellectual sparring partners. He begins to
For Woolf, however, the diary serves as more than lend her books, they go to the Tower of London
just a way to bypass Gilbert's spectacles. The bare together, and she has him over for dinner. One of
76

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her last entries reads, "Dined alone with B. M....

He became very agitated. He said it was time we
understood each other.... I tried to make him
listen. But he would not. He threatened that if I
did not... "; the remainder of the entry is carefully blotted out. After B. M.'s death, her only
entries are "He has done what he threatened" and
"Have I the courage to do it too?"
Just as Gilbert serves as the universal patriarch,
Woolf intends Angela to represent more than
simply a particular individual. Except for keeping
the diary, Angela is the ideal wife, one of the
"women [who] have served all these centuries as
looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious
power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its
natural size" (Room, p. 35). After a few years she
realizes her existence is not fulfilling and begins
to look outside of the marriage for meaning for
her life. She works with the poor, reads books on
economics, attends political meetings, and eventually comes to question her upper class status.
She once records, "B. M. told me the story of his
childhood. His mother went out charring....
When I think of it, I can hardly bear to go on
living in such luxury.... " and admonishes herself, "Three guineas for one hat!" That she
crosses out an entire page near the end of her
diary by writing "Egypt. Egypt. Egypt" over it
indicates that she saw a connection between her
husband's treatment of her and his role in society
which she was beginning to abhor.
Evelyn Haller in her article, "Isis Unveiled: Virginia Woolf's Use of Egyptian Myth," explains that
at the time Woolf wrote, Egypt was seen as a "subversive element' and its study was viewed as "a bold
undertaking, for it undermined the Victorian
world view" (Haller, p. 109). Haller explains that
Woolf in particular "sid[ed] with Egypt against
imperialism, Christianity, and patriarchy" (Hallar,
p. 110). Although the evidence is slight and not
always firsthand, it seems clear that Angela is
decidedly more than just a good wife who falls in
love with another man and kills herself because
her lover does. Rather, she is an example of a
woman who comes to realize that the roles of gender and class are interdependent and constrictive.
Little has been written about "The Legacy," but
what has been written generally treats the story as
a misunderstanding between two people and not
as an indictment of class and gender roles. For
example, Jean Guiguet in Virginia Woolf and Her
Worksremarks, "It is just a special case of the dif-

ficulty all human beings have in understanding

and knowing one another, an example of the ignorance and loneliness from which we try in vain to
escape" (Guiguet, p. 339). Robert Kiely in Beyond
Egotism:TheFiction ofJamesJoyce,Virginia Woolf,and
D. H. Lawrence describes "The Legacy" simply as
a story about marriage told by two authors, a husband and a wife. He believes the "moral outrage"
Gilbert feels at the end "gives way to shock and
despair at the extent to which human beings,
including married couples, are isolated from one
another" (Kiely, p. 88). Only recent criticism recognizes the importance of class and gender in
understanding "The Legacy." In "What is to Console Us?: The Politics of Deception in Woolf's
Short Stories," Selma Meyerowitz explains that in
"'The Legacy,' a rather typical plot involving an
extramarital love relationship is transformed into
a perceptive statement about the destructive
effects of class and status on human values and
interpersonal communication" (Meyerowitz, p.
242).
The third interpretation of "The Legacy" is
more a variation of the second than a completely
different reading. Students who grew to mistrust
Gilbert and ultimately sympathized with Angela
believed Gilbert received his comeuppance at the
end by realizing what had actually been going on.
The few critics who have written about "The Legacy" also hold this view. Robert Kiely writes, "The
crux of the tale is the husband's realization that
his wife-the one person he supposedly knows
through and through, a woman he thinks belongs
to him-is capable of a life. . . that he cannot
share" (Kiely, p. 88). Jean Guiguet writes that
"The Legacy" begins as a "riddle" and ends with
a "solution," crediting this particular story with
"more firmness and clarity of outline" (Guiguet,
p. 341) than any of Woolf's other short stories.
Rudolf Villgradter believes that Woolf uses the
notions of illusion and reality to structure "The
Legacy," arguing that illusion is eventually
stripped away, thereby exposing reality at the end
of the story (Villgradter, p. 288). Even Selma Meyerowitz believes Gilbert arrives at a "final understanding of the illusions he maintained about his
wife and his marriage" (Meyerowitz, p. 246).
I would like to suggest that Gilbert's realization
at the end is a mock realization, and that instead
of bringing the story to closure, it points out how
little we really know. Throughout the story, we
have seen Gilbert repeatedly stereotype others
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77

according to gender and class. Even a person he

has never met is not exempt; in reference to B. M.,
Gilbert claims he "knew the type, and had no liking for this particular specimen, whoever B. M.
might be." We also have ample evidence that Gilbert makes assumptions which later turn out to be
false. He blithely assumes his wife's death is not
premeditated; he assumes that because he is
remembering Angela and Sissy working together
"no doubt Miss Miller was thinking of that, too";
and after Sissy confirms that B. M. was her
brother, he assumes he now knows the truth. Even
when Sissy asks if he would like an explanation,
Gilbert refuses. By the end of the story we should
mistrust Gilbert enough to be suspicious when he
claims that he has the truth, that "she had stepped
off the kerb to rejoin her lover." Instead of figuring out the riddle of Angela, Gilbert only sees a
woman who prefers another man sexually. Instead
of enlightening him as to what has really been
going on, Gilbert's final "realization" will probably
only confirm his stereotypes about women. Angela
remains, despite Gilbert's claim of knowledge,
basically unknown.
"The Legacy" does not just make the connection between class and gender; it makes the connection among class, gender, and traditional
fiction-Gilbert is husband, politician, and narrator. His authoritative voice presents reality as "a
series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged," and
even in a moment of crisis and in the face of contradictory evidence, he adheres strictly to his
myopic depiction of it. Not only is this rendition
of reality false, according to Woolf, it is, like class
and gender, a from of oppression which at times
can be deadly.

78

Works Cited
Guiguet, Jean. Virginia Woolfand Her Works.Trans. Jean
Stewart.New York: Harcourt, 1965.
Haller, Evelyn. "Isis Unveiled: Virginia Woolfs Use of
Egyptian Myth." in Virginia Woolf:A FeministSlant,
Jane Marcus, ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1983, pp. 109-131.
Kiely, Robert. BeyondEgotism: The Fiction of JamesJoyce,
Virginia Woolf,and D. H. Lawrence.Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Marcus, Jane. "Thinking Back through Our Mothers"
in New FeministEssays on Virginia Woolf,Jane Marcus,
ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981, pp.
1-30.
Meyerowitz, Selma. "What Is to Console Us? The Politics of Deception in Woolfs Short Stories" in New
FeministEssayson Virginia Woolf,Jane Marcus, ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981, pp. 238252.
Schlack, Beverly Ann. "Fathers in General: The Patriarchy in Virginia Woolfs Fiction" in Virginia Woolf:A
FeministSlant,Jane Marcus, ed. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1983, pp. 52-77.
Villgradter, Rudolf. "Die Konzeption der Wirklichkeit
als Struckturelement der Erzahlungen Virginia
Woolfs." Germanisch-RomanischeMonatsschrift 16
(1966): 282-297.
Woolf, Virginia. "The Legacy." A Haunted House and
OtherStories. London: Hogarth, 1943.
. "Modern Fiction." Collected Essays, 4 vols.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967.
SA Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, and World, 1957. First published in 1929.

Ann Lavineformerlytaught in Verona

High School, Wisconsin.

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