How Should One Read a Book?

Throughout her essay, Woolf makes use of imagery to help the reader grasp concepts that are fundamentally abstract. In the first paragraph, she conjures up quotidian scenes of a common life including “women gossiping,” “trees rustling,” and “donkey braying” (1). She goes on to compare these ordinary moments to the amalgamation of books on a shelf in a library, acquired from all different places for all different reasons. Woolf draws in her reader with these images, giving examples of commonalities they may have experienced, points of entry to her essay that they can grasp onto.

The kind of library that she portrays offers a vast choice of genre. In differentiating the many genres and how one should understand them, she states that expecting the same results from poems, novels, and biographies is like expecting the same from a tiger, a tortoise, and an elephant. This simile not only paints a picture but also emphasizes the flexibility that reading requires, as Woolf argues. These images are essential to her theme of The Critical Freedom of the Individual, since she argues that the personal approach to reading is tantamount. The variety of images also primes the reader for the rest of her essay, which weaves in and out of differing genres. This comparison also warns the reader of the negative feelings that arise when one has the wrong expectations of the book in front of them. She continues the metaphor as she asks that readers do not, in their own minds, confine a book within its designated genre. She explains that books “are always breeding new species from unexpected matches among themselves” (4) in the same way that animals are. Woolf hence draws a parallel between literature and nature, exploring Art as a Reflection of the Natural World in its variety.

Her comparison of literature to quotidian scenes continues as she attempts to define the “indescribable fascination” of the genre of biography. She paints a picture of a person walking down the street, imagining that “one has left one’s bare and angular tower and is strolling along the street looking in at the open windows” (11). The open windows, she posits, draws in the onlooker in a way that fiction cannot and provides the truth of another’s life. Using this metaphor, she explains how biographies can answer the questions that naturally arise in one person’s brain about another’s daily life. The metaphor praises biographies as a way to peek through the windows. This further attaches abstract ideas about literature to real images to clarify her argument.

Throughout the essay, Woolf uses allusions, mentioning famous artists and analyzing certain styles. She references several authors and texts throughout the essay: Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and with more depth, Defoe, Austen and Hardy, exploring their different styles and demonstrating Woolf’s extensive knowledge of English literature. For example, as she explains the reader’s obligation to put themselves in the writer’s shoes in an effort to get the deepest understanding of their novel, Woolf analyzes the way three different authors might approach the same situation. She argues that Defoe, for example, would focus on narrative, while Austen would focus on characterization, and Hardy on the dark side of humanity. In each of these instances, the reader is asked to focus on a different aspect of the scene. By putting herself into the mind of three vastly different styles, Woolf exemplifies what she is asking of the common reader. With enthusiasm and knowledge, Woolf exults each author’s sentence structure and inclinations, showing her reader the excitement a person can feel when they accept and indulge in these narrative differences. Woolf’s personal and enthusiastic tone here is essential to her theme of Finding Pleasure in Art.

Woolf goes on to discuss the responsibility of the reader beyond just ingesting the words, which is to judge the quality of the work as it compares to others. She says that books that people have read “hang in the wardrobe of our mind” (16), giving a physical body to abstract takeaways. This metaphor brings the act of reading from the public or intellectual sphere to the personal and intimate, imagining not a desk but a “wardrobe.” Woolf’s concept of the reader’s responsibility hence underscores The Critical Freedom of the Individual, since this metaphor suggests that judging a work is a personal matter.

Aside from figurative language, Woolf relies on rhetoric in this essay. She addresses the reader casually and directly. She makes use of rhetorical questions frequently, asking unanswerable questions about reading, curiosity, and what is good or bad to make a point rather than to provide an answer for her reader. By using rhetorical questions, Woolf makes the essay feel like a conversation between reader and writer. She constructs her reader as an equal intellectual. She begins this conversation with the title itself, “How Should One Read a Book?” which acknowledges that the question is part of the answer, that she does not have the answers, and that she is asking this question, too. As she goes on, she asks the most fundamental questions about reading: What is the point of reading? Do people aim for pleasure, profit, or something else? She responds to her own questions that she will attempt to provide guidance but that she will not write laws about it. By asking the question “How are we to learn the art of reading for ourselves?” (2), she makes her ultimate goal clear: each reader must learn how to read in a way that works for them. She also uses pronouns “we” and “ourselves,” first person plural pronouns, to give the effect of camaraderie rather than didacticism. She nudges the reader in certain directions without prescribing the solutions.