Reading and writing a little in my continuous Virginia Woolf project (s), this 1920 diary entry had me looking about for more information on the classicist Janet Case, and led me to an academic journal article from 1982 which I liked so much that I include the JSTOR link here. (Alley, Henry M. “A Rediscovered Eulogy: Virginia Woolf’s ‘Miss Janet Case: Classical Scholar and Teacher.’” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 28, no. 3, 1982, pp. 290–301. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/441180. Accessed 23 May 2020.) Henry M. Alley’s piece written following the discovery of Woolf’s 1937 eulogy, says multitudes about both women; the conflicts between generations, the choices made, the hurdles surmounted and sometimes not.
in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (Cambridge 1885)
An anomaly, by virtue of her sex, at Cambridge at the end of the 19th century, the extraordinary young classics scholar, found her way into The Cambridge Greek Play (mentioned by Woolf in her eulogy), and that I can’t help but notice was first presented in 1882, the year of Virginia Woolf’s birth. And, one doesn’t have to go back to the Antique or Renaissance for evidence of the possessive hand men still held upon theatre and the classics, for her appearance seems to have been an exception – or at least a misunderstanding!
…in the Eumenides of 1885, the part of Athena was played by a woman, Miss J.E. Case, who had made her mark as Electra in an enterprising production of Sophocles’ play a the new Girton College in November 1883 […] despite her acclaimed success no woman featured again until 1950 …
The History of the Cambridge Greek Play
Janet Elizabeth Case became Virginia Woolf’s (or more precisely Virginia Stephen’s) Greek tutor in 1902, and over time her role evolved beyond that of intellectual mentor and into one as confidante and friend. Case entered the young Virginia’s life at a chaotic time; when her mental state was fragile, and into a dysfunctional familial and domestic situation, fraught by grief and power struggles. Obviously Case’s learnedness and intellectual rigour would have impressed, and her lessons would have offered some structure and discipline to her pupil’s often tortured days, but she may also have exemplified for Virginia an alternative life model of what a woman could be – a notion that was taking form in the stifling atmosphere of her Father’s house, and which was to become an essential component of her work and how she lived her life.
As the years passed, the relationship between the two women became complicated variously by age, tradition, expectation and circumstance, but in The London Times 22 July 1937 obituary (reprinted at the end of Alley’s article), the respectful tribute Woolf pens to her old tutor and friend, could be no finer, no more generous in spirit. For the older Woolf had long ceased craving the approval of her old teacher (or just about anyone else for that matter!), was confident enough in her fame and the literary route chosen, and was no longer tormented by petty irritations and jealousies. And she knew then what the younger had not, of the burden of intractability brought on simply by the years lived – of being ‘set in one’s ways’ – for they now were upon her. What remained for Woolf were the ideas sown and lessons learnt long ago, that were essential to the writer she became – and an appreciation for their giver. So, then, was the profound personal loss she felt for Miss Janet Case – the tutor who showed her the way to the Greeks – and without the grammar!