1. Edwin Muir mainly sides with Woolf, but he also feels that Woolf exaggerated in her harsh analysis of the Edwardian adherence to convention and formula. .

Muir, Edwin. "Recent Criticism: The Hogarth Essays, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown." The Nation and Athenaeum 36 (December, 1924): 370-372 4. annotated bibliography: Agreeing with Woolf, Muir recognizes that the Edwardians use externalities (such as the kind of house, furniture, clothes, jewelry) to make the public believe in ?Mrs. Brown.? And without these externalities to help them, the Edwardians certainly create poor fictional characters. However, Muir feels that Woolf magnified the strength and influence of the Edwardian convention. ?It cannot be such an appalling obstacle as she makes out,? Muir writes. He postulates that, inevitably, new form and ?convention? of novel writing will be built up, since the difficulty at present is that ?there are no formulae which everybody will accept.?

2. In evaluating another author's work, Chatto and Windus commend Woolf's work.

Chatto and Windus. "Books of the Quarter: A Man in the Zoo, by David Garnett" The Criterion (January, 1925): 483-486 . annotated bibliography: With all the current different perspectives on novel-writing, the authors observe that one can hardly write a novel at all. They feel Garnett has made a definite effort to fight against the ?chaos and decay? of the novel without attempting to argue with or defend any of the contemporary contending parties. Chatto and Windus refer to Woolf?s works in evaluating Garnett?s work:

"It now seems that the novel is in the position which painting occupied in England twenty years ago, and that there is no choice but consent to constant reproduction, or determination to find a perfectly new form. In Virginia Woolf?s Jacob?s Room one sees a very positive endeavour to discover a new form, and in spite of its inequality, it is certainly the nearest approach to a new form of novel which has been made since Ulysses."

3. In the prominient literary journal, The Nation and Athenaeum, Edwin Muir writes an essay that praises Virginia Woolf's novels.

Muir, Edwin. "Contemporary Writers: Virginia Woolf." The Nation and Athenaeum (April 17, 1926): 70-72. annotated bibliography:The essay is a tribute to Woolf?s novels. Muir describes from several aspects of novel-writing, which he deems the most important, in relation to Woolf?s novels. The first of which (seen again and again in many critics of Woolf and Bennett) is character-creation. Muir makes the major point that Woolf accepts her characters as they are; she is on the same plane level as they are; she is not aloof from them, nor analyzes them from distance, as Joyce does. Her mind becomes the mind of her characters. She is not detached in any way, and there are no barriers for us to meet her characters on the same plane level as she creates them. "Her attitude, like theirs, is eminently practical, tolerant, appreciative, intelligent," writes Muir, and we, as readers, can easily follow the mind of the novelist and the world she creates. All of these aspects of character-creation, according to Muir, are an indication of supreme intelligence and artistic merit, both of which, Muir believes, are extremely important qualities of enduring novelists. Muir feels that Woolf has a complete comprehension of her characters and presents them in ways such that we feel as if we are meeting them in actuality, in real life. Indeed, Muir writes, Woolf?s Night and Day is an "indisputable artistic triumph."

Besides character-creation, intelligence, and artistic merit, Muir point out that the uniqueness of Woolf lies in her ability to infuse the background with the foreground in her novels. The background, to Woolf, is not just an inanimate object that the characters shown in. In her novels, the environment is given a life as well; it is as much a part of the characters as their inner being, their minds. As Muir writes, ?London is in ?Mrs. Dalloway,? a living presence, a source of deep pleasure. The mood in which this presence is felt is perhaps the farthest removed from the dramatic, realistic mood.? Muir believes that this Woolf?s ability to infuse the environment into the everyday experience of her characters is another indication of her intelligence and artistic merit. ?The characters in ?Mrs. Dalloway? are real: they have their drama; but the day and the properties of the day move with them, have their drama too; and we do not know which is the more real where all is real ? whether the characters are bathed in the emanations of he day, or the day coloured by the minds of the characters,? writes Muir.

For his conclusion, Muir points out that Woolf is not only an outstanding novelist, but an excellent critic as well. She shows abundantly the intelligence and practicality of temper of the critic, as Muir writes, ?She has the informed enthusiasm which criticism should never lack?her judgments have admirable breadth.?

4. Like Samuel Hynes, Beth Daugherty agrees that Woolf and Bennett fought for more personal reasons, but she argues that the "personal reason" was not class-bias. Rather, a decade-long debate ocurred because Woolf not only argued for her concept of "character-creation," but also for her feminist ideals and a self-image as an able and talented woman.

Daugherty, Beth. "The Whole Contention Between Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Woolf, Revisited." Virginia Woolf: Centennial Essays. (Troy, New York: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 269-288. annotated bibliography: ?Although the disagreement between Woolf and Bennett about character exists on at least several levels ?personal, social, cultural, generational, historical, and aesthetic ?a fundamental difference weaves through all these others: Woolf and Bennett differ about women?s intellectual and artistic abilities,? writes Daugherty in the introductory paragraph of her essay. Throughout the rest of the essay, Daugherty mainly seeks to support her claim that Woolf argued not only for her concept of ?character-creation? and aestheticism, but also for her feminist ideals and a self-image as a strong, able, and talented woman. Originally, as Daugherty points out, Woolf praised Bennett in her journal entries and in a review of Bennett?s 1917 article on post-impressionist paintings. Woolf even admired him for his apparent esteem for the unconventional, for the non-traditional. She thought him broad-minded and a ?creative artist.? However, as Bennett adhered to traditional realism and Woolf broke away from it, her opinions of Bennett began to change.

Daugherty ventures to say that Woolf originally looked upon Bennett as a father figure, so that he could somehow validate and encourage what she wrote, created, and experimented. However, Bennett did the opposite. He criticized; and after the publication of Our Women, Woolf lost all hope of gaining his respect or support, which could have credited her talent, especially when Bennett, at the time, was an old, established, and renowned novelist. Thus, instead of an encouraging father figure Woolf hoped he would be, Bennett turned into a tyrant, someone who not only wrote that her writings were ?second-rate? and only ?clever,? but who also believes that women shouldn?t try to write at all for their inferiority to men. As Daugherty writes, Woolf backlashed with a vengeance. She wrote to the editor of The Newstatemen protesting her point that women are just as good, if not better, novelists as men are, given education, experience, and opportunity, and unbiased stereotypes.

The essay is a testimony to Woolf?s talents and tact. Daugherty proposes that Woolf combined her aesthetic and feminist ideals in the three versions of ?Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.? ?Throughout the essay, Woolf actually argues on two fronts, and to make what she says apply to both character and women, Woolf chooses details and a major character that will communicate both aesthetic and feminist views,? writes Daugherty. For instance, the insertion of Mrs. Brown was a perfect method for Woolf to talk both about her standards of character-creation and feminist beliefs. When Woolf has the atypical, elusive, and invisible Mrs. Brown protest ?that she is different, quite different, from what people make out,? she is really protesting for the uniqueness of her own writing and the hidden capabilities of women. Thus, Mrs. Brown is essentially a representative of Woolf.

Daugherty ultimately sides with Woolf in the Bennett-Woolf debate. She criticizes Bennett for evading Woolf?s arguments, saying that Bennett simply reiterates in all his reviews of Woolf: ?he criticizes her characters, praises her writing (though always with some qualification), identifies her work as feminine, and constantly denies her work?s importance,? as if a woman?s argument was not important enough to be proven wrong. At the same time, Daugherty points out the various strength, creativity, and tact of Woolf?s rebuttals against Benentt. And for the essay?s conclusion, Daugherty quotes Woolf herself, writing that Woolf was "trembling on the verge" to become one of the greatest novelists of ?one of the great ages of English literature.? And why? Because, according to Daugherty, Woolf never abandoned Mrs. Brown or her feminism ?she intrepidly stepped onto the stage of modern literature, flouting tradition and stereotypes.

5. Joan Bennett describes Woolf's character development as entirely different from other authors of the past, one that produces a new effect.

Bennett, Joan. "Characters and Human Beings." Critical Essays on Virginia Woolf. (Boston, Massachusetts: G. K. Hall & Co., 1985), pp. 37-52 annotated bibliography: How is Woolf?s character development so different? J. Bennett writes that Woolf gives readers snapshots of personality that are never complete in themselves, but when combined, they render the complete picture. The illusion of the all-seeing eye from previous authors is replaced by the illusion that we are seeing by glimpses. As an example, J. Bennett juxtaposes Jane Austen?s characterization of Emma against Woolf?s characterization of Lily Briscoe (from To the Lighthouse). Analyzing the passage that was quoted from Austen, J. Bennett points out that it could stand by itself; we could understand the personality of Emma from that passage without reading the entire book. For Woolf?s passage, however, we could never understand Lily Briscoe completely without reading the entire the book, as J. Bennett writes, ?[Austen?s] passage is centripetal. The passage from Virginia Woolf is centrifugal. Everything in it implies or demands extension out into the rest of the book.? The analogy is particularly apt, since J. Bennett believes that Woolf?s characters could never be completely described or understood in a simple paragraph; rather, they are part of the experiences, recollections, and memories of a lifetime.

J. Bennett, like other critics such as Muir, point out that Woolf assumes the thoughts and emotions of her characters, so much so that the writer herself seems to have vanished, and we are no longer aware of a mind directing our judgment. Unlike other authors, according to J. Bennett, Woolf leaves the judgment of her characters to the readers; she does not impose any judgment herself.

Along those same lines, the judgment of her characters is at times perceived in glimpses from other characters. Their personalities ever changing, ever fluid, personalities are reflected in others? thoughts and experiences. For instance, in Mrs. Dalloway, we become more intimate with her through Peter Walsh?s recollections. Part of the reason Woolf?s method of characterization is so different from other authors, J. Bennett states, is that she invests a large amount of time in describing one character?s influence upon another, much like human relations in real life (Mrs. Dalloway is not defined by her thoughts and experiences alone; she becomes complete through her friends, lovers, and family). ?The impact of one personality upon another continues in all her books to be an important means of composing the portrait of a human being,? writes Bennett. Moreoever, J. Bennett states that Woolf emphasizes the fluidity of human personality rather than its fixity. Thus, Woolf?s method of ?character-creation in glimpses? is all the more apt, since, according to J. Bennett, Woolf perceived the varieties of impressions made by one person upon the people around him and his own ever-changing consciousness of the surrounding world.

6. Christine Froula defends Woolf on the grounds of feminist sentiments.

Froula, Christine. "The Death of Jacob Flanders." Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 76 annotated bibliography: Author informs that, Woolf, in an effort to ? ?raise the moral currency of civilized nations,? ? publicly attacked the everyday misogyny at play in a dispute on the Plumage Bill and wrote two letters to the editor of the New Statesmen to rebut her Bloosmsbury friend Desmond MacCarth?s favorable review of Arnold Bennett?s Our Women: Chapters on the Sex-Discord (1920), in which he asserts that no amount of education will ever entirely overcome women?s innate intellectual inferiority.

Woolf argues that in any civilized society women must have education, ?liberty of experience,? and freedom to ?differ from men? openly and without fear. She states:

?The advance in intellectual power seems not only sensible but immense; the comparison with men not in the least one that inclines me to suicide; and the effects of education and liberty scarcely to be overrated. In short, though pessimism about the other sex is always delightful and invigorating, it seems a little sanguine of Mr. Bennett and Affable Hawk (Desmond MacCarthy) to indulge in it with such certainty on the evidence before them.?

7. Christine Froula analyzes Woolf's The Waves in terms of Woolf's feminism..

Froula, Christine. "A Fin in a Waste of Waters." Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 179 annotated bibliography: Author observes that the politics of Woolf?s The Waves is inseparable from its aesthetics insofar as it seeks to actualize genius in a woman?s body, thereby demonstrating not one woman?s genius but women?s equal likelihood of possessing inborn genius; as well as women?s equal and unremarkable freedom to move from particular to universal, from ?she? to ?one.? Anticipating the publication of A Room of One?s Own, Woolf invites Desmond MacCarthy to survey the history of English women writers to measure how immensely women have advanced in ?intellectual power? with increasing access to education; and she contemplates with equanimity the thought of being herself compared with men ? including her elder and rival Bennett and MacCarthy himself.