How Should One Read a Book?

Interrogation is the act of formal and systematic questioning. Woolf uses this term to describe the question mark with which she ends the title of her essay, “How Should One Read a Book?”. She references this interrogation to prime her reader for a recurring choice in the essay, saying “you will notice the note of interrogation at the end of my title. One may think about reading as much as one chooses, but no one is going to lay down laws about it” (2). Woolf’s uses of the world “interrogation” expresses a sense of uncertainty, “freedom,” and open-mindedness, not any idea of examining someone with aggression or force. This sense of equality and problem-solving is essential to the essay's meaning and purpose.

Narrative refers to the form and style in which a story is told. Woolf and the literary modernist movement explored the experimental potential of narratives, breaking the traditional boundaries of form, style, and meaning. Woolf draws direct attention to these possibilities when she imagines how Defoe, Austen, and Hardy would portray the same scene. Although Woolf chooses traditional writers, her focus on the differences between them highlights the narrative process as an essential, self-expressive part of the writer’s craft, with countless possibilities.