Three Guineas

Three Guineas

Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas was the easiest to read out of all the novels that we were assigned over the course of the semester. In some ways it was, what I never thought I would say of one of Virginia Woolf’s works, too easy. The reason is because it was a bit repetitive. It seemed like the narrator kept telling and re telling every decision. They did have valid points. The man’s undying efforts to sell the idea of investing in the war efforts ran on and on. While there were funny lines and jabs at the male sex, it could have been shortened. Her decision to give to a school in the end of the chapter was hilarious. It was as if she was telling the man that she would support the school in hope of educating other to be less like him. A woman was not thought to be a suitable scholar in the time period yet; she proves that she cannot be sold on his war efforts. War, which was going on in much of the time that Woolf was writing, proved to serve as a unifying source for the community. However, she always placed education above war. The only thing that I did not like about this work was the continued repetition throughout the novel. Woolf probably did this though to prove her point, which she definitely accomplishes. She also might have felt that the repetition was needed in order for ordinary people to understand her writing purpose.

(I am sorry and embarrassed that this post is so short. I forgot that I hadn’t done it yet and realized you were closing posts at midnight tonight.)

SS: The Legacy

Short Stories

The Legacy

This short story is on of the favorite things that I have read this semester. I love the fact that the narrator remains neutral. She never speaks out against Angela’s husband, Gilbert Clandon. On the first page the reader is told that Angela has died, by stepping off of the curb and being hit by a car. She left all of her personal items to friends, it was as if she new she was going to die. Her preoccupied husband of course, does not come to this conclusion at first. Instead he goes on talking about how much she loved all of her little trinkets. He puts great emphasis that everyone one of her “little gifts” that she gives to friends all have something to do with him. He tells the reader about an enamel dolphin that he gave her. To him the dolphin is just another meaningless gift that mean the world to his simple wife. Dolphins symbolize a renewal and a kind of rebirth. Its significance in this story is that Angela chose death in order to be reborn—away from Gilbert Clandon. Angela was a “Angel of the house” because she let her husband do everything that he wished, keeping a pleasant home. The key to this was not letting him know how smart she actually was. Gilbert even tells the reader that everything had a place to go except her diaries, “fifteen little volumes.” His describing them as “little” shows how insignificant he believes the workings of his late wife’s mind to be. Another interesting aspect of the story as a whole is that Angela is never given a voice. The reader does not ever here from her. Everything is told from Gilbert Clandon’s perspective which is, despite what he may think, limited to say the least. Gilbert’s ignorance is portrayed when he mistakes Sissy Miller’s offer to help in any way as her having admired him all those years. He is so self consumed that he flatters himself with false praises. The gift that she left him was, in his opinion, not much of a gift. Still, he read through her diaries. In them he only focused on the parts of the entries that were about him. When he comes upon an entry about Angela and B.M. spending the evening together alone he becomes bothered. He tried to think back to the night. After checking his engagement book he finds that he was at the Mansion House dinner. Again, he is only thinking about himself, where he was, what he was doing. He cannot recall if there was anything out of place when he got home because he can only remember his speech. The last entry of the book lifts the fog that Clandon has been living in, he realizes that there was an affair and that Angela would rather be dead with B.M. than remain with Gilbert Clandon. As highly as he thinks of himself, he cannot ignore that his wife would rather kill herself to be with a man of lower class that spend one more day as Angela Clandon. “The Legacy” contains all of the irony that any supporter of the feminist movement could want. Gilbert Clandon represents repressive men and even though she is not given a voice, Angela’s actions speak louder than all of Gilbert’s useless, self-consumed, words.

Between the Acts

Between the Acts

Between the Acts was much easier to read than most of the works that we have read throughout the semester. This reason behind this is because Virginia Woolf began thinking more about her readers. Because we are not all able to think on her level (not even close) the story line was much more simple than that of previous works such as Orlando and The Waves. It was especially hard for me to keep up with The Waves, making Between the Acts much more enjoyable. One of the things that we talked about in class was the effect of what was going on around Woolf while she was writing this novel. At the time much of Europe, including England was at war. Because of the war there was more of an instant community. Everyone had something in common. Their country was at war. In this novel she focuses more on this community in the pageant. As we discussed in class, this is a concept that Woolf is not overly comfortable with. Looking back at other works, it becomes obvious that Between the Acts has the most dealing with an instant community. For example, in The Waves, all of the characters go about doing their own things. They start out in a group, a sort of child’s community, but spread out fairly quickly in the beginning of the novel. Another theme is the individual mind versus the communal mind. This theme constantly goes back and forth between the two oppositions. My favorite aspect of this novel is that it includes issues that were occurring in the World around Virginia While she was writing the book. An example of this is the rape of a 14-year-old girl. In real life, she was raped by a British guard. He tricked her into going off the street, and raped her. In the book the story is told from a newspaper article. The girl was told their was a horse with a green tail. Once she got to the stable, she found that there was, of course, no such thing. The troopers took up to a barrack and threw her on the bed. One removed parts of her clothing. Woolf tells the reader that “she screamed and hit him about the face…” It is painfully obvious what the little girl had to go through. The story becomes real, because the article does such a good job of putting the reader in the place of the crime. Lucy becomes the agent that offers the girl the hammer to use for protection against the men. She envisions the attack so clearly that it comes to life in her own home. She pictures the room she is in as the room that the attack happens. She pictures Arc Hall, the barrack, and the bed that the helpless girl was raped on.

There was an interesting footnote on “Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow.” It deals with the connection between swallows, nightingales, and rape. It deals with a Greek myth in which the women are blamed for everything, even being raped. Woolf’s inclusion of metaphors such as this one is sprinkled throughout the novel. Her ability to write on so many different levels is truly inspiring. It is interesting that her last novel was the most easy to read. You would think that she would become more challenging and skilled as she wrote. It is not that she was not becoming more skilled, and she certainly was not becoming less intelligent. I believe that Between the Acts was Woolf’s beginning to understand how to write for an audience.

Later Essays: Death of a Moth

Later Essays:

Death of A Moth

This essay had a great deal of effect on me toward the end. At the beginning of the essay Virginia Woolf did a very good job of differentiating between moths that fly during the day and those that are primarily nocturnal. I had never thought before of a moth as a “hybrid creature.” Woolf’s description of them being ”neither gay like butterflies not somber like their own species” gives the reader a more in depth view of the moth. Without this comparison I would have never thought of a single moth on such a personal basis. The detail in which she describes the wings of the Moth are more beautiful that one would normally think this flying insect to be. The wings being described as “narrow hay-coloured” makes me think of simplicity and nature rather than what I would normally consider a dirty tan. The wings being “fringed with a tassel”, further pushes the illusion that this moth’s wing are comparable to a beautifully woven rug, or cushion of some kind. Woolf does a good job of explaining the setting that the story takes place in. First, she gives background on the moth, then she describes the scene in which the story takes place. This pleasant mid-September morning was described so well that I pictured myself there, breathing the mild air. The rooks journey round the tree tops is an important detail because it illustrates the freedom that lies just outside. Being an “annual festivity” allows the reader to assume that this is another typical mid-September day. There is nothing out of the ordinary. This moth was surely not the first to be stuck in a windowpane. Finding a dead moth on my window sill is not extraordinarily uncommon. I have even seen them get trapped in-between my window and blinds. Virginia Woolf’s description of watching this moth die leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. She personifies the life of the moth to a degree that makes me feel guilty for not sticking out a pencil, or opening the blinds when I knew the moth to be stuck and without hope. Even though the narrator does not help the moth in the end, and the creature dies, there is a sensitivity that is felt. The most depressing yet honest line in the essay, in my opinion, is “there was something marvelous as well as pathetic about him.” In the same paragraph the narrator goes on to state the obvious, no matter how insensitive it may sound “the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused on to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.” This is of course, referring to his continued efforts to pick himself up and fly away. If he only had been created as something more powerful such as a human being. That will to live would have served a greater purpose. Being a moth is to an extent, insignificant. No matter how many times he failed, he seemed to refuse to give up. Eventually of course he does give in to death, which is one of the most powerful statements. The essay contains a bit of irony when the moth finally succumbs to death. As insignificant as the moth may be, it dies. As powerful and indestructible as human beings believe that we are, we also die. In the end how can we say that moths are more insignificant that us when, both of use have no way of defeating death?

Critical Review: Jacob's Room, A Buried Discomfort

The Elusive Self

Jacob’s Room

Some Buried Discomfort

Louise A. Poresky’s chapter on Jacob’s Room goes into several different themes of the novel. The overall topic is Jacob’s search for the self. Poresky points a great deal of her attention to Jacob’s need to escape from his mother’s imago. She explains that Woolf’s sense of the existence of the parent in the child is obvious in the novel. Jacob constantly tries to find himself by running away from his mother, including anyone or anything that reminds him of her. On page 76 Poresky explains that the reader usually concentrates on the masculine because it is the “portion of composite personality that manifests fear of growth through its wish to over power the feminine.” She continues to explain that Woolf “stylistically abandons realistic clarity of her first two novels and adopts impressionism to reflect this step out of the conscious world and into the dark unconscious.” In the beginning of the novel Jacob is trapped in the conscious world and slowly slips into a much darker and deeper unconscious as he runs from his mother’s intolerability and degree of protectiveness. Poresky states that the only way to find the purpose of the difference in the narrator is to compare normal passages to those where the narrator directly addresses the reader. This is an interesting viewpoint in that she explains that Woolf originally planned for the Narrator to come from the conscious to serve as a “norm:” so that the reader could better pick up on and understand Jacob’s “deep unconscious.” This article really stresses the strong dislike that Jacob holds toward his mother. She is described as being a dark and cold woman who constantly works to repress any passion, a very depressing and oppressing lifestyle. An example of her repression is given on page 80, she repeats that she does not like men with red hair at least two times. She does this in response to reading a letter that Mr. Floyd wrote professing his love for her. An example is given in the article where latter in life Jacob expresses his rebellion, as he does not read a letter from his mother until after making love to Florinda. Jacob is never found throughout the book. It ends with woman being left alone, without him, when in all reality he was never there psychologically. Jacob’s dying in war is explained as being his death from the physical world. Poresky argues at the end of the chapter that he lives on with Bonomy through the wind. This is an interesting analysis, and the entire chapter discussed some unique and valid points.

Critical Review: Words, Words, Words

Words, Words, Words

A pragmatic and socio-cognitive view of lexical repetition

Peter Verdonk’s “Words, Words, Words” is an article looking at the pragmatic and socio-cognitive view of lexical repetition. This article first defines the meaning of word, “the minimal meaningful unit of language.” There are two categories that a word can fall under which are, context and functional. Context words are described as being nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. These are known as “open classes” because they easily allow new “members” or words to fit into the category of being a “context” word. Verdonk defines a lexical word as being one straight from a dictionary’s definition. He also brings about another valid point that “word” is not a legitimate definition for a “word” because there are some that are not just one word. Some examples are “tight-rope walker” “sound out” “tidy up” and more. As confusing as it may sound, Verdonk does a good job of making it clear that a word can actually consist of more than one word. The other category of words is that of “Function words.” These are defined as being a closed class who do not as easily permit newcomers. They are primarily grammatical. Examples are pronouns, artifacts, auxiliaries, conjunctions, and prepositions. An interesting and important term that Verdonk brings to light and defines is “intertextuality” which is, the notion that “texts are produced and interpreted through our conscious or unconscious experiences of other texts” (15). One of the main concepts that this article focuses on is the audiences’ attraction to repetition of any kind in literature. According to this article, it is imbedded in our instincts to structure everything according to patterns, including repetition. The reason behind this is that we understand our world through these patterns, and through what we refer to it as, symmetry. Verdonk claims that symmetry is all that we know, therefore if we wish for our brains to survive, we must make sense of everything through patterns and repetition so that we can find the “symmetry” that we are so accustom to. In a sense, symmetry is the key to deciphering the complex code that makes up the world around us. There are two reasons for repetition that Verdonk lists in his article. One is the unifying affect that was just described, the locating of symmetry. The second is to convey emphasis and to heighten emotion. Both, are important ways of using repetition and help explain why we do not get fed up with it in some works that when being looked at from a statistical standpoint, we should be fed up with. Instead of being annoyed, the reader becomes even more infatuated and engrossed in the worked. After reading this article, we know that the reason lies in our natural instincts. We are used to the symmetry of the world. If we are used to it in our everyday lives, it makes sense that it would become appealing to us through literature. Verdonk’s ability to describe this instinct through socio-cognitive science was a unique way of researching and finding reason behind what Verdonk describes as “why humans are charmed by patterns of repetition.”

Verdonk, Peter. "Words, Words, Words: A Pragmatic and Socio-Cognitive View of Lexical Repetition."Twentieth-Century Fiction: From Text to Context. 7-31. London: Routledge, 1995. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 4 Dec. 2010.