“Why?”

This chapter begins by considering how Woolf’s generation experienced in the 1930s the accelerated pace of history in the making. At the time when the question became “How to put art and words in action?,” Woolf’s historical writings were placed under the sign of urgency and political intervention. I, therefore, explore Woolf’s move towards the exploration of history in the “raw,” along with the questions of historical distance and historical causality. I then draw on Woolf’s historiographical work in a few essays, The Years, Between the Acts and Three Guineas to show how she prompted her readers to acknowledge her contemporaries’ crisis in historical consciousness, to envision the chaos to come while resisting communal passivity.