"Solid Objects" by Virginia Woolf

     “Solid Objects” by Virginia Woolf tells the story of a man slowly losing his mind or actually finding real purpose and happiness in his life. The story centers on two young men named Charles and John. John has a prestigious career in the British Parliament who has a very busy life, “many papers to keep in order-addresses to constituents, declarations of policy, appeals for subscription, invitations to dinner, and so on” (206). It is clear that he detests his job because in the beginning of the story when he is walking with his friend Charles, he yells “Politics be damned!” (202). His friend is supportive of his career until John begins to develop a new passion. While they are at the beach, John finds a piece of glass in the sand and takes a particular liking to it. It was not a special piece of glass as Woolf writes, “the smoothing of the sea had completely worn off any edge or shape, so it was impossible to say whether it had been a bottle, tumbler or window pane; it was nothing but glass” (203). John soon fantasizes about the story behind the glass and creates these detailed imaginative possibilities such as being “worn by a dark Princess trailing her finger in the water as she sat in the stern of the boat” or being on the “oak sides of a sunk Elizabethan treasure-chest”. Over the course of the novel he begins to develop a collection of small, round solid objects made from either glass, china, amber, rock, or marble. He becomes so obsessed and infatuated with these little solid objects that he misses a train to address his constituents for re-election because he eyes a piece of broken china and eagerly pursues to posses it. It feels as though this all happens in a short amount of time, but actually this happens over many years. In the beginning, John is described as young and towards the end of the story he begins to look old and was “too silent to be asked to dinner” (208). People stopped visiting him and his political career was over. Instead of travelling to fancy events and obligations regarding his upper class status, he was going to the decrepit and broken places of London. He found that the most beautiful and luxuriant objects were “pieces of waste land between railway lines, sites of demolished houses, and commons in the neighbourhoood” (207). When his friend comes back at the end of the story, he asks John why he has given up and John replies to him saying that he hasn’t. This is a prolific statement because it shows that John is not embarrassed or upset at how his life has changed. He thinks it is a new beginning for him instead of ruining his life as Charles sees it. It makes readers reflect on whether or not John really did make a self discovery and find joy in his life or if he is going insane. One parallel that I noticed with the second short story I read by Woolf (“The Legacy”) which was that both male protagonists were members of Parliament. In “The Legacy”, Gilbert Clandon is proud of his position, however he is also seen as self absorbed, even in the wake of his wife’s death. It is an interesting parallel because it shows how one life in Parliament is versus another and that maybe this prominent and rewarding job does not guarantee happiness.