The Euphrosyne

On board the Euphrosyne, the Vinraces, the Ambroses, and later the Dalloways (who join them at a port in Lisbon), have little to do but walk the deck and talk, or sit at various meals and talk as they journey toward South America. Michael Cunningham writes in the Modern Library edition's introduction to The Voyage Out that the ship's name, the Euphrosyne, was "so named by Woolf as a private joke - it was the title of a collection of solemn poetry she considered ridiculous, published by her husband and some of her friends." (Cunningham, xi). Throughout the novel, English concepts of civilization are discussed and critiqued directly and indirectly. It seems as though Woolf is mocking the kind of misguided "civilization" and "intellectualism" which the ship seems to carry on it, and the way in which the English see themselves as the ambassadors of civilization and...