Monday or Tuesday contains eight short stories, including “Kew Gardens,” “A Haunted House,” and “A Society.” Woolf wrote her angry feminist story, “A Society,” in response to Arnold Bennett’s views on the intellectual inferiority of women as put forth in his book Our Women. In her tale, Woolf allows a group of women to examine the civilization produced by men—their books, courts, and colleges. As war breaks out at the end of the story, the women conclude that the future for their daughters is bleak unless a new society can be conceived. Once a woman learns how to read “there’s only one thing you can teach her to believe in—and that is herself.”

Virginia Woolf. Monday or Tuesday. With woodcuts by Vanessa Bell.
Richmond: Hogarth Press, 1921.

According to the advertisement, shown here, the reviews of Monday or Tuesday were superb, except for “A Society,” which particularly annoyed her reviewers: “She gushes drivel, as in ‘A Society’ with the certainty that it is wisdom, and her sense of honour is unmistakably feminine.”—The New Age

Hogarth Press. Advertisement for Monday or Tuesday, 1921.

Presented by Frances Hooper ’14.
Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College

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