Dr. Javadizadeh's article focuses on the letters Woolf wrote to her friend Violet Dickinson in the weeks following her brother Thoby's death from typhoid in 1906, in which she tells a series of lies about her brother's improving condition. Woolf's letters, he argues, express a desire to escape the threat of illness and death and imagine a different future that resonates with the anxieties and uncertainties of our current moment.
"From where I sit today and write," Dr. Javadizadeh writes, "Virginia’s desire to leave behind a climate of illness, to get up and go away, to be transported to a future one can’t quite see—and which may not exist—feels familiar and intense. I want to get in my car and drive; sometimes I catch myself thinking that if I drive far enough, for long enough, I will have found my way not only into a different place but into a different time, released from today’s grief and dread. The fantasy is interwoven with worry: in our fond talk of what we’ll do after “all this” is over, are we, like Virginia, deceiving one another, and ourselves? Or might our dreams of escape make room for other possibilities, worlds we want to live in but can’t yet describe? Can desire be a way of knowing?"
