The Years

Written in 1937, The Years was the most popular ofVirginia Woolf's novels during her lifetime. It explores a rich variety ofthemes such as sex, feminism, family life, education, and politics in Englishsociety from 1800 to the 1930s, as they affect one large upper-class London family.
The principal theme of thisambitious book is time, threading together three generations of the Pargiterfamily. The story begins on a day in 1880 in the household of Colonel AbelPargiter, his dying wife, and their seven children, and it ends in the 1930swith a brilliantly depicted party at which the Pargiters, young and old, passin review. Important events-births, deaths, marriages, wars-occur in the wings;it is the commonplace moments that are captured here in a sequence of perfectlydrawn scenes. As the Pargiters move from the oppressive confines of theVictorian home of the 1880s to the 1930s, they are weighed down by thepressures of war, capitalism, empire, and the rise of Fascism.