Virginia Woolf – Page 6 – My Own RE:public

Clarissa’s other party

Doing some podcast catching up over Christmas, I particularly liked an episode of “The Essay” from BBC Radio 3 in which Bernardine Evarista imagines another ending to Mrs. Dalloway.

In fact, several things Evarista says in her (audio) essay interest me. Firstly, “To the Lighthouse” was her first encounter with Virginia Woolf, but that contrary to my immediate delight on reading this book many years ago, she as a girl of colour yearning to discover something of herself in the books she read, was left cold by the very white, very English world of the Ramsays, and so concluded Woolf had nothing to say to her. A lot later then came Mrs. Dalloway into the life of the the mature writer Evarista, comfortable now in her skin and in her person, she sees the fearless experimentalist writer that also does “skin”; differently, inhabiting the skin of her characters. Evarista it seems can at last appreciate the unique genius of Woolf. (And, in this audio, speak beautifully on it.)

Thinking of Mrs. Dalloway not so long ago, I too used the expression “a day in the life of” , but Evarista cleverly takes our shared expression one step further; turning it around and adding “…or a life in a day”, thereby getting to the very essence of the novel; unmasking the shallow exterior to reveal the history and complexity of an inner life, and not just that of Clarissa Dalloway, for all the characters carry the baggage that a life brings; strewn as it is with regrets, dissatisfactions, repressions, be they emotional, sexual or matters of practical predicament.

Bernadine Evarista’s ending is a reimagining of the character of Lady Rossiter – Sally – Clarissa’s intimate friend of youth, such that, instead of bowing to the restrictions of convention and society, Sally leads still the spirited, free life so promised in that rebellious girl long ago.

The Hours MS

A favourite “day in the life of” if ever there was one, is brought to mind again with The New York Times reporting on the publication of a new reproduction of the full draft of what was tentatively titled “The Hours” and was to become Mrs. Dalloway. Absolutely beyond my modest budget, but an imagined treasure just the same!

*Cover design Vanessa Bell, Hogarth Press, 1925.*

Beyond the title, revealed (to me anyway!) is the metamorphose of Virginia Woolf’s initial idea of a grand post-war London narrative into a deceptively more modest work. The minutiose account of one woman on one day endures as one of the finest character studies in modern literature.

By the way, I’m collecting all things that come my way relating somehow to Mrs. Dalloway here, where links are also to be found to “The Hours” manuscripts held at the British Library.

Goblin Market

Reading recently by chance Christina Rossetti’s narrative poem “Goblin Market”, I could not help but think about Virginia Woolf; the reasons for which I explain in some detail here.

Christina Rossetti is deserving of more attention, and will be returned to (soon, I hope!). Amongst other things, given Rossetti’s intense religiosity, I would be interested in exploring the leap of faith necessary for Woolf to embrace her.

Also, whilst looking for a copy of the poem, I came across this very nicely put together page at The Victorian Web, with the full text and a lot of interesting contextual information about the poem and of course about Rossetti herself. More generally, The Victorian Web is one of the better and more accessible resources out there in the big, wide whatever …!

“Virginia Woolf? – Snob!

Richard Wright? – Sexist! Dostoyevsky? – Anti-Semite! ” So, Brian Morton asks in The New York Times, just how should we read great writers from the past whose moral blind spots offend us?

I read the above piece while underway yesterday – a really good contribution I think to the fiercely debated topic of how to approach literary works written in the historical past. I particularly liked Morton’s time machine analogy! And I was of course immediately alert to the “snob” accusation against Virginia Woolf – one which I happened to use of her a couple of days ago. It seems as a reader I instinctively cope with the “snob” Woolf under the guise of a time-traveler as Morton suggests. Though “snob” is a rather mild description, one could just as well attach the “anti-semite” tag to her also – the stereotypical language she uses of Leonard Woolf and his family, amongst others, would be untenable today. Nor would it be hard to find, from she an icon of women’s literature, some ideas that may today be considered sexist; for even she was not immune to the patriarchal conditioning rooted in the class structures of the society in which she lived. And her ideas on race and intelligence were very much colored by contemporary thinking on social-Darwinism and eugenics popular in her social milieu.