The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race and the Dreadnought Hoax

Description

This presentation is about the iconic feminist writer Virginia Woolf and her hoax on the British Navy. In 1910, she dressed in blackface and boarded the HMS Dreadnought pretending to be an African prince. The talk intertwines three fascinating stories: a scandalous prank and its consequences, Woolf's ideas about race and empire, and the Black experience in Britain, from real princes to Caribbean writers and South African activists. Describing an extraordinary chain of events, the speaker will explore how and why this future revolutionary novelist joined in a bigoted blackface prank and suggest what it tells us about Woolf and her world.

Image by James Lafayette

Program Takeaways

• An appreciation of the 1910 Dreadnought Hoax's historical context and its role in Virginia Woolf's thinking.
• An understanding of the often-overlooked diversity of Virginia Woolf's world, particularly the place of people of African descent.
• The problem of reconciling Woolf's enlightened ideas about women and war with her participation in this racist prank.