Critical Review: The Spaces in Jacob's Room

Mind the Gap: The Spaces in Jacob’s Room

Edward L. Bishop

Edward Bishop discusses the importance of silence in Jacob’s Room. Bishop puts a great deal of emphasis on the gaps and spaces in the pages of the novel. He goes so far as to say they are “the essence of the text itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the narrative to exist at all.” Bishop describes the silences as a way to give the reader a steady pace that helps their minds move into and through the silence. Harvena Richter is referenced in an argument that wolf “uses negative ‘blank spaces’ or ‘intervals’ in a positive way so as to make them contribute to subject feeling.” Bishop goes on the further argue that the gaps are necessary in order to engage the reader. He expresses extreme displeasure with the fact that the novel has been reprinted, shrunk, and edited so much that these valuable space breaks have been ignored and discarded. Bishop explains how to read the works best and what to avoid. It is noted that one should not read Jacob’s Room on a screen. The article describes the differences between the original book published by the Hogarth Press and the American Addition that came three months after. There were several sections missing in the American edition. Bishop gives detailed examples of the differences between the two texts. This article places a great deal of emphasis on the spatial gaps on the pages that he believe Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press intended to include, that were ignored in the American editions. Without these spaces, Bishop argues that the novel does not reach its full potential and purpose.