[Eric]

I'm glad that Woolf wasn't a revolutionary. All revolutions come to grief. Few people can escape their social background. Personally, I can see that her books are set in a rather privileged, upper middle-class background which I have rarely experienced. However, the interiority, free association, etc. is what I concentrate on. I'm not looking for empathy in her writing, but for style. I think her style is very interesting. I'm not so interested in the Bloomsbury set, her bisexuality, her ultimate suicide, Lytton Strachey, etc. It's all there at the back of your mind, of course, but I'm reading Jacob's Room as a novel.

I haven't read any other Woolf for years, barring Orlando, when I translated an Estonian story that was published three years before that novel but also involved a sex change and was set in a similar commedia dell'arte way. But that novel isn't typical. It's more of a sophisticated spoof. Every few years, when I decide to give Woolf another try, I am pleasantly surprised. Jacob's Room does actually move forward as a book, despite the rather static, claustrophobic title. Appreciation and adulation are two different things.

I'm afraid you've used another word I don't understand: "contextualize". What does that mean?