In re-reading A Room of One's Own for my exam, I came across the passage in which Woolf imagines the young woman whose novel she's been reading as a jumping horse.
"At any rate, she was making the attempt. And as I watched her lengthening out for the test, I saw, but hoped she did not see, the bishops and the deans, the doctors and the professors, the patriarchs and the pedagogues all at her shouting warning and advice. You can't do this and you shan't do that! Fellows and scholars only allowed on the grass! Ladies not admitted without a letter of introduction! Aspiring and graceful female novelists this way! So they kept at her like the crowd at a fence on the race-course, and it was her trial to take her fence without looking to right or left. If you stop to curse you are lost, I said to her; equally, if you stop to laugh. Hesitate or fumble and you are done for. Think only of the jump, I implored her, as if I had put the whole of my money on her back, and she went over like a bird. But there was a fence beyond that and a fence beyond that. Whether she had the staying power I was doubtful, for the clapping and crying were fraying to the nerves. But she did her best."
Think only of the jump, she says. Duly noted.
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