Empire and the Woolfs: anti-imperialism in The Village in the Jungle and “Kew Gardens”

In this project I compare and contrast Leonard Woolf’s novel The Village in the Jungle and Virginia Woolf’s short story “Kew Gardens,” in order to explore how each author describes, defines, and decries British intercontinental imperialism. Troubling the critical consensus regarding the gendered distinctions between the work of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, I will trace how the authors variously exploit and expose Victorian demarcations of gender, sexuality, race, and class to motivate their anti-imperialist critiques.