Kew Gardens is a short story written by Virginia Woolf and originally published in 1919. The story describes four pairs of people—a married couple, an elderly man with a young man, two elderly women, and a young couple—as they pass a flower bed in a botanical garden in London. Each couple’s story is shown only in fragmentary moments, which give the reader only a sense of their relationships without offering any depth of detail. The story uses the imagery of falling petals and butterflies to suggest the randomness inherent in the decisions that shape human lives.
Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. No Description Available. Fiction Short Stories. From the same author. Book Details. Language: English. Published in: 1919. Use our free chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis of Kew Gardens. It helps middle and high school students understand Virginia Woolf's literary.
The setting, the writing style, and even some of the specific imagery used (like waterlilies) are meant to evoke the impressionist aesthetic. The story was originally published as a 24-page pamphlet by Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard. It was the first commercial success for their publishing company, Hogarth Press.
Snails don't get enough credit. Sure, they're slow andslimy, and they might wreak havoc on our gardens, but that doesn't mean they'renot worthy of our love and affection. Seriously, when was the last time youever heard someone say that snails were their favorite animals?In case you didn't know, we here at Shmoop love us somesnails. We think about them all the time, and love talking about them, too.They're just so snaily.
One of our favorite things to imagine is how the worldmight look from the perspective of a snail—everything must happen so much moreslowly; your perception of time must be completely different from a human. Youmight think we're kind of weird for having these thoughts, but know who elsethought of the same thing? Virginia Woolf. That's right, the Virginia Woolf—authoress extraordinaire and fellow snaillover. In fact, it may or may not surprise you to learn that her short story, ' KewGardens,' features a bit from the perspective of our favorite animals:snails. When else have you ever heard of a snail making an appearance inclassic literature?
You know this has got to be good.' Kew Gardens' draws our attention to a bunch ofrandom activities going on in the Royal Botanic Gardens in London on a hotsummer day. Some of these activities include the snail's noble struggle througha flowerbed, but also the movements of butterflies, the ranting of a crazy, oldman, and the awkwardness of a young, romantic couple. Oh, and tea-taking—it isEngland, after all. The story alternates between descriptions of the naturalenvironment and of the different figures that wander through it. Its plotstructure is deceptively simple, but don't let that fool you—'Kew Gardens'is one of Woolf's most remarkable short stories, and not just because it has asnail in it.Published privately in 1919 and more widely in 1921 (in thecollection Monday or Tuesday ),'Kew Gardens' draws together these different 'fragments' oflife—a snail in the dirt here, a couple's awkward conversation there—and unitesthem into a singular scene of life in an English garden in the early twentiethcentury. Woolf's most famous novels like Tothe Lighthouse and Mrs.Dalloway didn't arrive till several years later after 'KewGardens,' so this story comes from relatively early in Woolf's writingcareer.
Still, it gives us a sneak peak at the style she wanted to cultivateand subject matter she wanted to focus on—like snails.In her 1919 essay ','Woolf explained her writing approach:Examine fora moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriadimpressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness ofsteel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; andas they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday.This ordinary mind on an ordinary day (like Monday orTuesday!) is exactly what Woolf set out to capture in her stories, and it isfrom the phrase 'the life of Monday or Tuesday' that Woolf took thetitle for her first short story collection. There's certainly nothing slimyabout that. What is Kew Gardens About and Why Should I Care? 'Kew Gardens' is all about the beauty andcomplexity of an average scene on an average day—it's something just abouteveryone can relate to. Who hasn't taken a stroll through a garden on a lovelysummer day, encountered other people, noticed a snail, smelled the flowers, andmaybe even reminisced about the past?
(Side note: If you haven't, you shouldtry it out, trust us.)Sure, all this might not sound very exciting to you—but that'sexactly the point. Woolf is trying to show us how when all these unexceptional andmundane aspects of daily life are drawn together, they create somethingexceptional and sublime. The scene in the garden is really an incredible one:intricate flowers here, butterflies flitting there, a snail debating whether togo over or under a leaf, a married man thinking about the girl he could havemarried, a young man with a girl he likes but hasn't married, an old mantalking to flowers, two women watching the old man talk to flowers it goes onand on.Woolf's story makes us think about all the little thingsthat make up an ordinary scene on an ordinary day, and might help us see thehidden beauty in our day-to-day lives.
Who would have thought a snail couldteach us so much (We certainly did, but we know we're not normal when it comesto snails)?.