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.