Abstract. Jane Austen (1775–1817), today known as “one of the supreme prose fiction writers of all literature written in English” (Dabundo 1992), delighted her readers with some of the most original literary creations of the 19th century. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), today known as a powerful writer who for her entire life lived under the sign of mental disorder (psychosis), offered her readers some of the most extraordinary literary achievements of the 20th century. In the present monograph, published on the special Memorial Anniversary of Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday, we focus on these two authors, who together form something of a literary sisterhood. We present the story of this literary sisterhood, which was formed no doubt by a kind of elective affinity felt deeply by Virginia Woolf, in two distinct sections: §1. The universe of Virginia Woolf; §2. The universe of Jane Austen. In section §1, we focus on three of Woolf’s masterpieces: 1) the Shakespearean time-travel novel entitled Orlando (1928); 2) the non-fictional work entitled A room of one’s own (1929), which helps one understand the androgyny concept behind Orlando; and 3) the novel entitled The waves (1931). In section §2, we focus on Austen’s collected major & minor works, in the following order: 1) Sense and sensibility (1811); 2) Pride and prejudice (1813); 3) Mansfield Park (1814); 4) Emma (1816); 5) Northanger Abbey (1818); 6) Persuasion (1818); 7) Lady Susan (1871); 8) The Watsons (1871); 9) a. The major juvenilia: Love and friendship (1922), The history of England (1922), Evelyn (1951), Catharine (1951), Lesley Castle (1922), The Three Sisters (1933); 9) b. The minor juvenilia: Frederic and Elfrida (1933), Jack and Alice (1933), Edgar and Emma (1933), The visit (1933), The mystery (1933), A collection of letters (1922), and The female philosopher (1922); 10) Sanditon (1925). Special extended attention is paid to Northanger Abbey, as this novel of Gothic extraction has especially caused confusion in Jane Austen studies and in her fandom. It may be still considered to be an enigma in the Austen canon, like Emma & Mansfield Park, among others of her works. Similarly, and for the same reasons, we focus extensively on the major & minor Juvenilia (including a few of Austen’s more important poems). We thus explore the classical versus the romantic aspects present in Jane Austen’s fiction, personality & life. The discussion in section §2 starts from the “Romantic case” of Jane Austen (or the “Romantic debate”), which emerged in Jane Austen studies owing to the generally prevalent unilateral wrong way of looking at Austen as a novelist entrenched only in Enlightenment thought. The question raised is if the real Austen is only the “Augustan” Austen, or whether Jane Austen’s perennial fiction & personality is much more complex, a battleground for a clash between cold (neo-)Classicism (“Augustan” Austen) & temperamental Romanticism (“Romantic” Austen), as clearly transpires for instance from Austen’s juvenilia. This led to the idea in more recent criticism that Jane Austen’s female protagonists are “heroines under siege” (Sulloway 1989), just as Orlando in Woolf’s novel is a time-traveling androgyne under the siege of time itself. We explore some of the sources of literary influence in Virginia Woolf, with William Shakespeare & Jane Austen being two of the most important ones. We consider Woolf’s biography, with special attention on the last five years of her life as reflected in The diary. We thus first introduce the reader to Woolf’s universe, to then go further back in time to initiate the reader into Austen’s universe, with a view to understanding the nature of these two writers’ geniuses and contributions to creativity. Austen & Woolf quite subtly form together what we call a literary sisterhood under the sign of Shakespeare & Romanticism. In Virginia Woolf’s case, we focus on her mental problems, and enigmatic suicide, i.e. the final price she paid for her outstanding creative energy. In Jane Austen’s case, in the context of presenting the common criticism that focuses on “Augustan” Austen, we also explore a minority of critics (like Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh 1920; Chesterton 1922; Woolf 1925; Harding 1940; Mudrick 1952; Kroeber 1960; Moler 1968; Levine 1975; Sulloway 1976 & 1989; Morgan 1980; Auerbach 1985; Beer 1986; Mellor 1993; Bloom 1994, 2002 & 2020; Burgess 1998; Tuite 2002; Galperin 2003; Deresiewicz 2004; Hannon 2007; Lau 2009 / 2016), who draw attention to the fact that many of Austen’s female protagonists are actual “heroines of romance,” or at least show the potential to become a “heroine of romance,” as is the case of Margaret Dashwood in Sense and sensibility (1811), a character almost totally absent from Austen criticism, with one notable exception (Dabundo 1992). Jane Austen’s message can be said to stand at the crossroads between Enlightenment & Romanticism, both of which she assimilated into her works, much as William Blake had assimilated chaos into his (as per Gallant 1978). Austen was involved in this labour of love (the assimilation of Enlightenment & Romanticism) throughout her career and from the very beginnings under the sign of William Shakespeare’s genius and the genius of fairytales like Cinderella & Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp from The thousand and one nights. Hamlet’s theoretical philosophy of “to be, or not to be: that is the question” (Hamlet 3: 1) becomes in Jane Austen’s works woman’s practical vital dilemma of “to marry, or not to marry”: that is the existential hub.

Key words: edge of existence; Orlando; As you like it; Northanger Abbey; Persuasion; time-travel romance; androgyny; syzygy; Ouroboros; labyrinth; Janeism; Augustan (neo-Classic) Austen; Romantic Austen; Shakespeare; fairytale; The thousand and one nights; Aladdin; Cinderella; Rosalind / Ganymede; heroine of romance; assimilation of Chaos/Gothic; Gothic domestic novel; intellectual domestic novel; stream of consciousness; gleeful iconoclasm; literary sisterhood

Stroe MA (2025) The universe of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf: the literary sisterhood. Creativity 8(1): 3–537. doi:10.22381/C8120251

Stroe MA (2025) The universe of Virginia Woolf. The universe of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf: the literary sisterhood, pp 8–121. Creativity 8(1): 3–537. doi:10.22381/C8120251

Stroe MA (2025) The universe of Jane Austen. The universe of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf: the literary sisterhood, pp 121–511. Creativity 8(1): 3–537. doi:10.22381/C8120251