Flush: a biography
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Flush: a biography, first published in 1933, is one of two fictional biographies written by Virginia Woolf, the other being Orlando: A Biography. Written after the completion of her emotionally draining The Waves, Flush provided Woolf a welcome break from her more demanding and experimental writings.
Upon finishing The Waves, Woolf read the letters exchanged between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning during their courtship. Flush tells the story of the Browning’s romance through the eyes of Barrett Brownings’s beloved English cocker spaniel, Flush, and the sacrifices he makes for his owner.
Woolf notes that the historical facts of Flush’s life are uncertain, as what information there is regarding Flush's life is found in poetry, a medium for which allowances must be made for its “exigencies of rhyme and the inaccuracies of poetic diction (10).” Despite these limitations, Woolf narrates the life of Flush from his humble beginnings in the English countryside to his last days in Italy. Most insightful and experimental are Woolf’s emotional and philosophical views verbalized in Flush’s thoughts. As he spends more time with Barrett Browning, Flush becomes emotionally and spiritually connected to the poetess and both begin to understand each other despite their language barriers. For Flush smell is poetry, but for Barrett Browning, poetry is impossible without words. In Flush Woolf examines the barriers that exist between man and animal created by language yet overcome through sumbolic actions.
Sources: Woolf, Virginia. Flush: a biography. San Diego: First Harvest, 1983.
Links: Virginia Woolf Society [1] International Virginia Woolf Society [2]
