The Years

Virginia Woolf's The Years, published in 1937, traces the lives of the Pargiter family across more than 50 years, from 1880 to the mid-1930s. Organized into chapters named by year, each introduced by a lyrical passage describing the season and weather, the novel follows several siblings and their cousins as they move from the constraints of Victorian family life into the uncertainties of the 20th century. Rather than building toward a single climax, the narrative accumulates through episodic scenes, half-finished conversations, and recurring images that link the generations.

In the spring of 1880, Colonel Abel Pargiter, a retired military officer with a mutilated right hand, sits in his London club while his wife lies dying at the family home on Abercorn Terrace. He secretly visits his mistress Mira, a younger woman living near Westminster, giving her money before returning home. At the house, his daughters Milly and Delia wait for tea alongside Crosby, the family's longtime servant. Eleanor, the eldest daughter at about 22, arrives from charitable work visiting poor families. She manages the household accounts and mediates between her siblings and their gruff father.

That evening, the youngest daughter Rose slips out alone on an imaginary military adventure. A man standing under a gas lamp exposes himself and nearly catches her; she flees home terrified but tells no one the truth. Meanwhile, Delia sits with her dying mother, secretly longing for her death so that she can pursue her devotion to Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell. Mrs. Pargiter takes a turn for the worse during dinner; the doctor reports that she has rallied, devastating Delia. In Oxford, the Pargiters' brother Edward studies Sophocles's Antigone, a Greek tragedy about duty and defiance, and dreams of his cousin Kitty Malone, the Master's daughter. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Pargiter dies. At the funeral, Delia glimpses something transcendent at the graveside before the clergyman's platitudes enrage her.

By 1891, the family has settled into new patterns. Eleanor runs the household and serves on committees while managing housing she has built for the poor. Kitty has married Lord Lasswade; Milly has married Hugh Gibbs. On the day Parnell dies, Eleanor sees the news on placards and goes to find Delia, who devoted herself to his cause, but Delia's lodgings are locked. The Colonel visits his brother Digby and Digby's wife Eugénie, a beautiful, expansive woman of partly foreign origin, at their Browne Street house. He watches their daughters Maggie and Sara dance around a bonfire. Sara has a slight physical difference resulting from being dropped as a baby. The Colonel leaves feeling depressed and envious of his brother's family life.

In 1907, on a hot midsummer night, Sara lies awake reading philosophy and fragments of Edward's translation of the Antigone. Maggie returns from a dinner party; they discuss what people really say at parties and whether the world is made of thought. Their mother Eugénie sweeps in and performs a stately waltz between the furniture, but their father Digby calls from the passage and she leaves before telling a promised story. By 1908, both Digby and Eugénie have died. Martin, Eleanor, and Rose gather at Abercorn Terrace, where the Colonel is slower after a stroke. The siblings reminisce about childhood, and Rose reveals she once cut her wrist with a knife after a fight with Martin. "What awful lives children live!" Martin observes. "And they can't tell anybody," Rose adds.

By 1910, Maggie and Sara live in a cheap flat south of the river. Rose visits, and Sara draws a vivid verbal portrait of her as someone who rides straight at authority. That evening, Kitty attends Wagner's Siegfried at Covent Garden, where the hammering of the sword reminds her of Jo Robson, a young man she once admired in Oxford. Late that night, news arrives that King Edward VII has died.

In 1911, Eleanor visits her brother Morris's family in the country and reads Dante's Purgatorio in bed, reflecting that things cannot go on forever. By 1913, the Abercorn Terrace house has been sold. Crosby, after decades of service, leaves for a rented room in Richmond, carrying her old dog Rover, who dies within days. Martin, reflecting on the hidden truths of family life, including his father's secret mistress, thinks: "There all those different people had lived, boxed up together, telling lies."

In 1914, Martin walks through London with Sara, listening to speakers in Hyde Park and meeting Maggie at the Round Pond. That evening he dines at Kitty's grand house in Grosvenor Square. After the party, Kitty catches the night train north. At dawn she climbs to a hilltop overlooking her estate. "She was happy, completely. Time had ceased."

The 1917 chapter takes place during an air raid. Eleanor dines at the basement flat of Maggie and her French husband Renny, where she meets Nicholas Pomjalovsky, a Polish intellectual whom friends call Brown. As bombs fall, they retreat to the cellar. Nicholas speaks of the soul's wish "to expand; to adventure; to form new combinations," while people now live "screwed up into one hard little, tight little knot." Sara reveals that Nicholas loves men rather than women; Eleanor feels a momentary shiver of repugnance that passes instantly, leaving only warmth. They toast "the New World." In a brief 1918 scene, Crosby learns from someone in a shop queue that the war is over.

The long final chapter, set on a summer evening in the mid-1930s, gathers the surviving Pargiters at a party hosted by Delia and her Irish husband Patrick. North, Morris's son, has returned from farming in Africa; Peggy, Morris's daughter, is now a doctor. Eleanor, in her late seventies and tanned from India, tears an evening paper in half at the picture of a dictator. At the party, old quarrels and affections surface. Rose and Martin bicker about childhood. Peggy bursts out at North: "You'll write one little book, and then another little book… instead of living… living differently, differently." Nicholas tries repeatedly to make a speech but is always interrupted. Edward, the aging Oxford scholar, recites a line from the Antigone in Greek; asked to translate, he shakes his head: "It's the language."

Two children, the caretaker's children, are brought in and burst into a fierce, unintelligible song, the words unrecognizable, the voices shrill. As dawn breaks, Delia pulls open the curtains. Eleanor stands at the window and watches a young man and a girl arrive at the house next door. He fits his key to the lock; they step inside; the door shuts. "There," Eleanor murmurs. She turns back into the room. "And now?" she says. The sun has risen, and the sky wears an air of extraordinary beauty, simplicity, and peace.