Trashëgimia
The Legacy

Summary/Abstract: "The Legacy" was revised in the autumn of 1940 and submitted for publication in Harper`s Bazaar. lt did not appear in print during Virginia Woolf's lifetime. lt is probably the last story she ever wrote and is a masterpiece in miniature. Relying largely upon diary entries as the narrative point of view, she succecds in just a few pages in sketching out the principal contours that define the married lives of Angela and Gilbert Ciandon. In carefully sequenced fragments from her diary Angela`s "legacy" to her husband and Gilbert` s self-centered reactions to those entry fragments, we are given access to the shadowy precincts of Angela` s private life. More than that, we are confronted with the harsh conceits of a vain and overbearing husband. Yet nowhere does the author hersclf pass judgment overtly on her characters. The whole story is quietly dramatized by the ironic device of giving the right book to the wrong reader - that is Angela`s diary put into Gilbert`s hands. Together they produce a vivid tableau of conflict in which Angela emerges exonerated and her husband justifiably condemned. The story is taken from "The Virginia Woolf Reader" edited by Mitchell A. Leaska. Translated from English by Sazana Çapriqi.

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