Summary

Chapter 11 is the only chapter not to be titled with a date; instead, it is called "Present Day." It is mentioned that Eleanor is now in her 70s; because she was 22 in 1880, we can assume it is now the 1930s — the period when Woolf wrote "The Years." Eleanor is talking with her nephew North, who has recently returned from Africa; after the war, he took up work on a remote farm, but has now returned to England. Eleanor, meanwhile, has spent an unspecified period of time in India. We follow North as he drives erratically across London, where he is going to have dinner with Sara. Sara, now in her fifties, is living alone in a boarding house, amidst poverty. They discuss the last time they had seen another — they had argued when North had told her he was going to war, but had...