Secularization and the Construction of an Author–Reader Intellectual Community: A Study of Virginia Woolf’s Religious Legacies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This essay makes a relevant contribution to the current critical reconsideration of Woolf’s reputation as a strict secularist.  The essay is articulately written and well-organized.  The author offers a cogent and persuasive argument for Woolf’s “religious legacies” in Quakerism, the Clapham Sect, and the intellectual ethics of Leslie Stephen and G.E. Moore. The idea that Woolf’s “common reader” provides a vehicle that joins the competing demands of intellectual/aesthetic expression and communal responsibility is both original and compelling.

My primary suggestion is to dial back broad claims about Woolf’s “intellectual practice” (line 427), her “essays and fiction” (line 433), her “literary and critical practice” (line 483), and her “essays and literary criticism” (line 505). The essay offers very limited examples from and assessment of Woolf’s own work – a handful of references from her letters and essays -- to substantiate these expansive claims.  Rather, I suggest narrowing the scope of the stated argument to focus specifically on Woolf’s construction of the common reader as a device for creating an “author-reader intellectual community” (line 14).  As I mentioned above, I find this interpretation of the common reader to be really interesting and original in the historic context that the essay presents – but it risks getting lost in a series of more generalized claims about Woolf’s oeuvre.

The sources cited are relevant and current, given the fairly small body of scholarship in this area of Woolf studies.  One source I would suggest consulting is Emily Griesinger’s “Quaker Mysticism and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse,” in Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf, ed. Kristina K. Groover (Palgrave, 2019).  I will also mention as a point of interest that the forthcoming Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism, and Religion (expected publication in late 2025/early2026) includes an essay by J. Ashley Foster on Quaker influences in Woolf’s work.

Author Response

Comments 1:

This essay makes a relevant contribution to the current critical reconsideration of Woolf’s reputation as a strict secularist. The essay is articulately written and well-organized. The author offers a cogent and persuasive argument for Woolf’s “religious legacies” in Quakerism, the Clapham Sect, and the intellectual ethics of Leslie Stephen and G. E. Moore. The idea that Woolf’s “common reader” provides a vehicle that joins the competing demands of intellectual/aesthetic expression and communal responsibility is both original and compelling.

Response 1 
Thank you very much for your encouraging assessment of the paper’s contribution and organisation. To make the essay’s stakes even clearer for readers who may be less familiar with recent debates on Woolf’s alleged secularism, we have added a concise framing sentence in the Introduction that explicitly foregrounds our central claim about the “common reader” as a mediating figure.

Comments 2:

My primary suggestion is to dial back broad claims about Woolf’s “intellectual practice” (line 427), her “essays and fiction” (line 433), her “literary and critical practice” (line 483), and her “essays and literary criticism” (line 505). Rather, I suggest narrowing the scope of the stated argument to focus specifically on Woolf’s construction of the common reader as a device for creating an “author-reader intellectual community” (line 14).

Response 2 
Thank you for this valuable caution against over-generalisation. We agree that several formulations risked implying blanket coverage of Woolf’s entire corpus. We have therefore moderated the wording at each of the four locations you identified, adding scope-limiting modifiers  and, where helpful, brief temporal qualifiers.

Change made: changing the relevant wording.

Updated text:

The study demonstrates how this religious inheritance is reconfigured in Woolf’s theory of the ‘common reader,’ highlighting her contribution to modernist aesthetics and ethics. Through the figure of the 'common reader,' religion emerges not as a set of fixed doctrines, but as a foundation for constructing ethical communities in a secular age.（line 15-18）

Woolf’s theory of common reader can be read as a direct response to this historical transformation.（line 450）

Thus, in her critical essays，particularly The Common Reader,（line 456）

Woolf's concept of the "common reader" is central to her novelistic practice, as it establishes a negotiated ethical relationship between author and reader that provides a pathway for modernism's ethical turn. This concept ultimately enacts an aesthetic-ethical transformation: modernist ethics moves beyond both moral didacticism and intuitionism toward a balance between internal ethics embedded in aesthetic form and external ethics committed to social engagement.（line 507-512）

Through her concept of the "common reader," Woolf not only inherited but also creatively transformed the ethical energy of these religious legacies, culminating in a modern intellectual community grounded in negotiation, collaboration, and shared ethical responsibility between the author and the reader.（line 535-538）

Comments 3:

 As I mentioned above, I find this interpretation of the common reader to be really interesting and original in the historic context that the essay presents – but it risks getting lost in a series of more generalised claims about Woolf’s oeuvre.

Response 3 

Thank you for this insightful recommendation. We fully agree that the strongest and most original contribution of the article lies in its historicised reading of Woolf’s common reader figure; consequently, we have refocused the essay so that this thread remains foregrounded and well-supported by close textual analysis.

Comments 4:

The sources cited are relevant and current, given the fairly small body of scholarship in this area of Woolf studies.  One source I would suggest consulting is Emily Griesinger’s “Quaker Mysticism and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse,” in Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf, ed. Kristina K. Groover (Palgrave, 2019).  I will also mention as a point of interest that the forthcoming Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism, and Religion (expected publication in late 2025/early2026) includes an essay by J. Ashley Foster on Quaker influences in Woolf’s work.

Response 4 

Thank you for drawing our attention to these sources. After close reading, we agree that Griesinger’s chapter materially enriches our discussion, whereas the unpublished Foster essay is premature for citation at this stage.

Critical appraisal of Griesinger (2019).

Griesinger offers the first sustained demonstration of how Quaker concepts of “Inner Light” shape the religious subtext of To the Lighthouse, emphasising Woolf’s ambivalence toward secularism and her inheritance from Caroline Stephen.

She explicitly frames Woolf’s spiritual aesthetics as a “complex and highly imaginative response to secularisation,” a claim that dovetails with our argument that Woolf’s common reader mediates between aesthetic autonomy and communal ethics.

Decision: Include. Griesinger supplies primary-text evidence (Mrs Ramsay’s “vision” scene, Lily Briscoe’s revelation) and secondary-source framing that strengthen Section 3’s close readings.

Change made: Inserted one sentence at the part (page 6, paragraph 2, lines 258–264).

Updated text:

This conception is even directly manifested in Woolf’s creative work. As in To the Lighthouse, Lily achieves the mother-and-child image through artistic imagination, thereby spiritually “going to the lighthouse.” Regarding this, Emily Griesinger argues that Woolf’s novelistic creation was profoundly influenced by her aunt Caroline’s Quaker mysticism, reflecting Woolf’s ambivalent attitude toward secular society and her commitment to transcending everyday reality as a modernist (141)

Added the citation:Griesinger, E. 2019. "Quaker Mysticism and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. " Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf. Edited by Kristina.K. Groover. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 123–45.

Critical appraisal of Foster (forthcoming 2025/26).

Because the Companion volume is not yet available, its arguments cannot be verified or quoted. Citing it now risks relying on un-peer-reviewed material. However, we will continue to monitor the publication of this work to provide a foundation for future research. Thank you for the reviewer’s recommendation.

I am deeply grateful for your thoughtful and constructive feedback, which has substantially strengthened this essay and profoundly contributed to my development as an emerging scholar. Your careful reading and generous guidance have been invaluable. Thank you for the time and expertise you have invested in reviewing this manuscript.

With sincere appreciation.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have some reservations about the author's method and the scale of the author's conclusions. The author is engaged in a method of intellectual history that establishes influence via familial or social connection rather than through careful archival or textual tracking/reading. Little evidence is provided that Woolf herself consciously absorbed the traditions outlined in the article; rather, as if assuming that creative and intellectual influence happens by osmosis or by genetic reproduction, the author offers a clear and interesting account of the sources (the Clapham sect, G. E. Moore, etc.) and then a few suggestive quotations from Woolf's work and concludes that the work of reading/research is done. While the intellectual and conceptual links  and homologies are compelling, and while I think most Woolfians would agree that the familial links to the Clapham sect and Quakerism are important and interesting, the author has not definitely shown that these backgrounds are any more important than the hundreds of other books/resources/contexts that Woolf has access and exposure to (and that she wrote extensively about).

I'm pretty sure there are other resources on Woolf's family background: by Jane de Gay, Kristina Groover, among others. But the author is right that this is not a widely discussed area in Woolf studies (though the interest in religion/spirituality as a context has become a pretty wide area).

Acknowledging that the area of investigation around Woolf and ethics is also vibrant and active in Woolf studies might be a good idea as well. The Selected Papers for the 2022 Annual Woolf Conference on "Woolf and Ethics" is freely available through Clemson University Press.

With all this said, I think an article that outlines the backgrounds of the Clapham Sect, Quakerism, and G. E. Moore's link to these matters would be welcome in Woolf studies. I just disagree about what the author has actually succeeded in demonstrating. Nothing has really been demonstrated definitely here: but some valuable speculations and juxtapositions are made and some valuable biographical/historical/familial information is synthesized.

Author Response

Comments 1:

I have some reservations about the author's method and the scale of the author's conclusions. The author is engaged in a method of intellectual history that establishes influence via familial or social connection rather than through careful archival or textual tracking/reading. Little evidence is provided that Woolf herself consciously absorbed the traditions outlined in the article; rather, as if assuming that creative and intellectual influence happens by osmosis or by genetic reproduction, the author offers a clear and interesting account of the sources (the Clapham sect, G. E. Moore, etc.) and then a few suggestive quotations from Woolf's work and concludes that the work of reading/research is done. While the intellectual and conceptual links and homologies are compelling, and while I think most Woolfians would agree that the familial links to the Clapham sect and Quakerism are important and interesting, the author has not definitely shown that these backgrounds are any more important than the hundreds of other books/resources/contexts that Woolf has access and exposure to (and that she wrote extensively about).

Response 1 

Thank you for this thoughtful critique of both methodology and evidentiary scale. We agree that the original version risked implying a deterministic, “hereditary” model of influence. In response, we have (1) clarified our intellectual-history method; (2) supplied additional primary-text evidence demonstrating Woolf’s self-conscious engagement with Quaker and Clapham ideas; and (3) explicitly acknowledged the plurality of Woolf’s reading contexts while justifying our decision to foreground this particular constellation.

Change made: Insert more arguments that strengthen the proof in the manuscript, and adjust the related statements accordingly

Updated text:

Adjust the article’s discursive tone to avoid using language that implies strong causal relationships, positioning these religious heritages as part of Woolf’s "intellectual background" or "frameworks of knowledge" rather than as her direct, conscious "inheritances."：The dual legacy of the Clapham Sect and Quakerism—secularized through the interpretive frameworks of Leslie Stephen and G. E. Moore—can be understood as creating a foundational tension that shaped the development of Woolf's aesthetic-ethical vision. （line 64）

Some additional strong arguments have been added: Woolf’s aesthetic ethics, shaped in part by the intellectual milieux of Leslie Stephen and G. E. Moore, emerged against the backdrop of an early twentieth-century crisis of faith in Britain.As Woolf said, ” And we have no religion. All is tumultuous and transitional”.（line 81-84）

This statement is too direct: The most significant transmission of the Clapham religious tradition into Woolf's intellectual environment came through her father, Leslie Stephen.（line 130-131）

Reduced generalizing claims in some fragmented statements

Comments 2

I’m pretty sure there are other resources on Woolf’s family background—by Jane de Gay, Kristina Groover, among others. But the author is right that this is not a widely discussed area in Woolf studies (though the interest in religion/spirituality as a context has become a pretty wide area).

Response 2 

Thank you for highlighting additional scholarship that touches on Woolf’s familial and religious contexts. We agree that works by Jane de Gay and Kristina Groover which have already been cited in the paper provide useful precedents and that acknowledging them will clarify how our essay builds on—but also extends—this emerging conversation.

Comments 3:

Acknowledging that the area of investigation around Woolf and ethics is also vibrant and active in Woolf studies might be a good idea as well. The Selected Papers for the 2022 Annual Woolf Conference on “Woolf and Ethics” is freely available through Clemson University Press.

Response 3

Thank you for this thoughtful suggestion. We have consulted the materials you mention and appreciate the pointer to the Selected Papers for the 2022 Annual Woolf Conference: “Woolf and Ethics” (Clemson University Press). While this theme is adjacent to—rather than central to—our present article, it offers valuable context and a rich bibliography that will inform our future work. We are grateful for the recommendation and will continue to engage more deeply with this scholarship as we develop subsequent studies.

Smith, A.C and P. Brinkley, eds. 2022. Virginia Woolf and Ethics: Selected Papers from the 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Paper presented at the 31st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, USA, June 9–12, 2022.

Comments 4:

With all this said, I think an article that outlines the backgrounds of the Clapham Sect, Quakerism, and G. E. Moore’s link to these matters would be welcome in Woolf studies. I just disagree about what the author has actually succeeded in demonstrating. Nothing has really been demonstrated definitely here, but some valuable speculations and juxtapositions are made and some valuable biographical/historical/familial information is synthesized.

Response 4 

Thank you for this candid assessment. We appreciate the distinction you draw between suggestive synthesis and definitive proof, and we have revised the manuscript to align our claims more precisely with the evidentiary base we present.

Increase the focus on "common readers" to make the argument more concrete：“The study demonstrates how this religious inheritance is reconfigured in Woolf’s theory of the ‘common reader,’ highlighting her contribution to modernist aesthetics and ethics. Through the figure of the 'common reader,' religion emerges not as a set of fixed doctrines, but as a foundation for constructing ethical communities in a secular age."（line 15-18）

It is therefore methodologically warranted to explore the reader–author ethical community in Woolf by probing its possible religious genealogies in relation to these two figures.Thus, By positioning Woolf’s “common reader” as the hinge between aesthetic autonomy and an ethics of communal responsibility—a hinge forged in the crucible of Quaker inwardness and Clapham-inspired social conscience—this essay joins current efforts to reassess her legacy beyond the paradigm of strict secularism.（line 84-90）

Minor revisions were made elsewhere to render the statements more consistent with the paper's reasonable conclusions, and the paper's limitations were added in the conclusion，but，Out of respect for the integrity of the conclusions, the main text will not be added for now; if necessary, it may be considered for inclusion in a footnote.

This article sketches an underexplored constellation linking the Clapham Sect, Quakerism, G. E. Moore, and Woolf’s ethical-aesthetic project, while noting clear method-ological limits. The evidence demonstrates contextual adjacency rather than strong-form causality: “resonant homologies” suggest affiliation, not intentional reception. Close readings are probative yet insufficiently longitudinal across the major works; the archival footing (letters/diaries) is heuristic, not dispositive in genetic or material-philological terms. Risks persist of milieu-to-author overattribution, selection effects, and minor peri-odization/secularization slippages. Accordingly, a forward agenda is to integrate ex-panded archival inquiry (reading notes, marginalia, drafts, library records) with system-atic narratological analysis—focalization, free indirect discourse, voice, diegesis—to test, refine, and potentially confirm these conjectures.

I am deeply grateful for your thoughtful and constructive feedback, which has substantially strengthened this essay and profoundly contributed to my development as an emerging scholar. Your careful reading and generous guidance have been invaluable. Thank you for the time and expertise you have invested in reviewing this manuscript.

With sincere appreciation