Street Haunting

“Street Haunting”: Virginia Woolf

The author of "Street Haunting" Virginia Woolf was born on January 25th, 1882. She grew up in a wealthy home and was educated by her father, Leslie Stephen. At an early age, she studied classics and Victorian English literature. In adulthood, she formed part of the Bloomsbury Group, an association of writers and intellectuals. In 1912, she married journalist Leonard Woolf. Together, they started Hogarth Press, which published nearly all her written work. The group profoundly influenced Woolf's writing, encouraging her to experiment and challenge storytelling conventions.

Fig. 1 - Virginia Woolf was well-connected in various literary circles.

“Street Haunting”: Summary

Woolf decides that she needs to take an excursion through the streets of London with the pretext of needing a pencil. It’s really just an excuse to escape her room and solitude. The ideal time for a walk in London is in the winter evening. There’s no heat to hide from in the shade, and one can take their time ambling along. By joining the vast multitude of pedestrians, one becomes anonymous.

She reflects on a time that she bought a piece of china and how it marked a memory for her in Italy. Items throughout one’s home help record experiences and define a person. This all vanishes once a person leaves their home and joins the masses on the streets. Woolf takes in the sights and sounds of London winter, falling leaves, and palely lit streets. She imagines the life of an office worker, thumbing through papers and answering correspondences.

Fig. 2 - Virginia Woolf is walking in bustling London on a winter evening while various thoughts run through her head.

Woolf reflects on the power of the eye and the mind’s eye and how it’s drawn to beauty. One must try to counter that impulse and search for more obscure curiosities that are less noticeable and tucked away. She sees (or imagines) a dwarf escorted by two larger friends. The dwarf carries herself with the usual manner Woolf sees in others who experience deformities. However, once inside a shoe shop, the dwarf proudly thrusts out her beautiful feet. The shopkeepers scurry around to find her shoes, and everyone is impressed by the beauty of her feet. Woolf laments that this moment becomes lost the minute the dwarf dresses herself and disappears into the outside world.

The dwarf seems to conjure up other people experiencing difficulties. Blind men, being led by a boy, pass by. She notes a hunched-back elderly woman draped in a cloak across the stairs of a building. A bedraggled homeless man stares nowhere in particular. This is contrasted with the “bright” legs of dancers and diners at the theaters nearby.

Woolf then imagines the perspective of a well-to-do Londoner, watching from their balcony the many interactions on the street and neighboring buildings. Statesmen shake hands, “footmen” stand guard and the Prime Minister speaks with an aristocrat regarding the “affairs of the land” while a cat slinks along a garden wall.

Woolf reflects on the absurdity of it all. Nature created man. Did nature intend for man to be the spectator or the walker? Which is his true identity? Does an occupation define a person, or can wandering “mystic” be just as valid of a life?

Fig. 3 - Woolf contemplates humanity's relationship with nature.

Through these musings, Woolf returns to reality, specifically a secondhand book store. The bookkeeper talks about hats. Endless rows of books are without a home. We never know what sort of literary adventure we will encounter. These books record a memory of a person who may have vanished since. She imagines travelers and their exploits in Wales, Greece, and China.

The number of books in the world is “infinite,” just like the stories overheard from other streetwalkers. Woolf remarks how a passerby may catch a word and never hear the rest of the story. City pedestrians must obey the flow of foot traffic. Two men share the latest “wire” from the news, and she wonders if they are hoping to catch good fortune with this information. Woolf watches the flow of walkers across the Strand and the Waterloo Bridge onto trains, where she imagines they’ll travel to some “prim little villa” on the outskirts of London.

Woolf stops to watch boats on the River Thames and two lovers enamored with themselves. Then she remembers the pencil and hopes that the shop is still open. She enters a shop and senses that the elderly owners had previously been arguing. The man cannot find the box with pencils and asks his wife. She quickly finds them. Woolf watches the woman return to sew, and the man to read a newspaper, feeling the “quarrel” has resolved itself.

Woolf returns to the streets to find them empty. She wonders about all the lives she has passed. Returning home, she takes stock of her familiar surroundings and reveres the one “treasure” she has retrieved, the pencil.¹

“Street Haunting”: Meaning

“Street Haunting” is about the joy of walking through the city streets of London. The essay follows her taking a walk to buy a pencil in the streets of London. The errand is an excuse for her to traverse the streets of London to escape the domesticity of her home.

Woolf extensively uses stream of consciousness in the essay. Reality and fantasy are not distinctly demarcated. Woolf describes in detail the appearances of others while launching into fantasies of their imagined lives.

“Street Haunting”: Themes

There are three themes in “Street Haunting”: people watching, escapism, individuality, and urban anonymity.

People Watching

The most obvious recurring theme throughout “Street Haunting” is observing others. Woolf delights in watching denizens go about their business. She describes in detail the people she passes. She often imagines their life and how their environment changes them. The dwarf is apologetic and small on public streets. Yet once inside the shoe shop, she is confident and proud, showing off her perfect feet and relishing the attention of others.

Escapism

Woolf delights in the fantasy of imagining her life as other people. She dives so deeply into the imagined minds of others that it’s not clear to the reader which is fiction and which is reality. When she steps inside the shop for a pencil, she notes that the atmosphere of the room feels like the “distilled” essence of the people who own it. She believes that the two owners have been arguing, but it is at once resolved as she buys a pencil. The story ends and begins with the pencil, with a brief mention in the middle. However, the pencil serves as an excuse for Woolf to escape the confines of her domestic life and go on an adventure in the city streets.

Individuality and Urban Anonymity

Cities, with their seemingly endless amounts of inhabitants, provide an opportunity for one to be an individual, yet lost within a crowd. Woolf describes the flow of pedestrians as something larger than life that cannot be defied. Observations of others are fleeting as the flow forces Woolf to continue onward. For a moment, people have distinct identities. In the theater district, she sees performers, yet once they fold into the crowd, they lose that identity and become indistinguishable from the rest. The dwarf goes from quiet to confident in the shoe shop, but back to quiet once she returns to the streets. For Woolf, she can assimilate any identity she chooses as she imagines the life of others, remaining aloof as she flows along the streets with the rest.

“Street Haunting”: Quotes

Here are a few quotes from Virginia Woolf's "Street Haunting."

Woolf describes the dichotomy between public and private life. When one enters the public realm, one must take on a respectable appearance. However, as a wanderer on the streets, she matches the latter description of a nomad or a pariah. Ultimately, though, one must “stand like the rest” and become anonymous once they mix with the crowded streets.

Woolf is referring to the power of escaping into imagined worlds of others. From very little information, one can discern the trials and tribulations of another. Whether they are accurate or not is beside the point. Woolf is delighting in the escapism offered by minute and passing details of others on the street.

This quote echoes the theme of Individuality and Urban Anonymity. Living in the city one can assume the identity of the crowd, that of a multitude of walkers, with their single-mindedness towards a specific errand. Yet, each individual becomes mysterious within the flow of the crowded streets and less distinguishable, losing some of their individuality but gaining the “bodies and minds” of the city streetwalkers.