The Legacy

Virginia Woolf

The Legacy

«“Mr. Clandon,” she said, looking straight at him for the first time, and for the first time he was struck by the expression, sympathetic yet searching, in her eyes. “If at any time,” she continued, “there’s anything I can do to help you, remember, I shall feel it, for your wife’s sake, a pleasure …”

With that she was gone. Her words and the look that went with them were unexpected. It was almost as if she believed, or hoped, that he would need her.»

When the prominent politician Gilbert Clandon is forced to take care of the property after his wife’s sudden death, he is faced with a legacy with unforeseen consequences.

Like several of Virginia Woolf’s short stories, The Legacy is a study of human selfishness and self-preoccupation and touches on issues such as jealousy, gender roles, identity and equality. Woolf’s strong conviction that fiction should not package reality as an absolute truth made her a master at shaping life as it could be experienced by all kinds of people.

And just like in several of Woolf’s short stories, The Legacy ends with a twist.