pull the rug (out) from under

Virginia Woolf published "Mrs Dalloway" on May 14th 1925, under the name of her own publishing house Hogarth Press. It freed her to produce work without having to bend to the whims of others; in a marginal note in an early draft of the novel, Woolf declares: "I will write anything I want to write"



Woolf delights in pulling the rug from under readers' feet
Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" was published on this day in 1925
ECON.ST

pull the rug (out) from under

Abruptly withdraw support from (someone):the debts of major companies are too large for the banks to pull the rug

More example sentences

• More importantly, though, Russell's narrative pulls the rug from under us, changing our perceptions of all three characters.
• But yesterday he effectively pulled the rug from under them by introducing 19 per cent corporation tax levy on those profits.
• In both countries, it was the external patron whom the local regimes had relied on for protection that pulled the rug from under them.