Соломина Екатерина

Literary and Stylistic Observations of the Story “The Legacy” by V. Wolf

'The Legacy' is a story about a widower who discovers from reading his wife's
diaries that she had fallen in love with a radical working man and committed
suicide. But that it is also a story that illustrates one of Woolfs underlying beliefs
about fiction-that it should not present reality as absolute and neatly packageable,
but rather as it is subjectively experienced by individuals. The strength of the story
lies in Woolf's narrative ability to create interest from the very beginning and
sustain it till the last line. There is the element of foreshadowing resulting out of
Gilbert's imagination which evokes in the reader the curiosity to know what
happens next. In the two passages given below: Yet how strange it was, Gilbert
Clandon thought once more, that she had left everything in such order-a little gift
of some sort for every one of her friends. It was as if she had foreseen her death.
Yet she had been in perfect health when she left the house that morning, six weeks
ago; when she stepped off the kerb in Piccadilly and the car had killed her.
Mixing light and shade like a skilful painter, Woolf makes Gilbert alternate
between imagination and reality to comprehend the truth. After Gilbert's brief
meeting with Sissy Miller the action revolves around the diary entries and we get
to see a probing revelation of the life of Angela, both through the perception of
Gilbert and through her own sensitive observations * about her own inner life, and
her relationships with her husband and her lover B.M. The triangular relationship
is fully examined, directly and indirectly, and the story ends ironically with
Gilbert's awareness of a reality that he had hitherto missed. Really interesting to
note how, at the end of the story, Woolf captures Gilbert's final moment of agony
as the truth dawns on him: "He could hear the cheap clock ticking on her
mantelpiece; then a long drawn sigh ... He had received his legacy. She had told
him the truth. She had stepped off the kerb to rejoin her lover. She had stepped off
the kerb to escape from him." Woolf was a proponent of the "stream of
consciousness technique." She succeeds in revealing the inner lives. of her
characters through Gilbert Clandon's state of mind when he reads the diary.
To sum up, I found this story quite interesting and dramatic. It tells about the
relationships between two people who were married. In my opinion, this story is
about misunderstandings between married people. Clandon Gilbert was into his
career and his wife was on the second place for him in his life. She felt it, she was
really alone and she wanted to be loved, she wanted attention. That`s why she had
a lover and died because of this situation: she loved B.M., but didn`t want to betray
her husband. And Gilbert was so into his work that didn`t notice some changes in
his wife, and understand all the situation only after reading her diaries.