Words, Words, Words ——— $Q VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) eR Life. Adeline Virginia Woolf was the third child of the celebrated Victorian critic and biographer Sir Leslie Stephen, and his second wife Julia Duckworth, who came from an illustrious Victorian family, and had three children from a previous marriage. Virginia Woolf's childhood was happy sand carefree; her parents encouraged her to read. study and to express her ideas. All changed. though, when she was thirteen years old and her mother died, which she said was ‘the greatest tragedy that could have happened.’ Her father despaired, and the family was looked after by the children’s half-sister Stella. Then, just two years later Stella died, ‘The situation deteriorated even further because Stella's widowed husband began to make passionate advances towards Viriginia’s older sister Vanessa, and Virginia, terrified by her half- brother George Duckworth’s covertly sexual terest, withdrew into a state of ‘frozen and defensive panic’. Under the influence of this anguishing family situation, Virginia changed from being an outgoing and happy git to being a painfully shy one, One more shock, it seemed, would surely drive her mad. This, unfortunately, soon came when he father died of cancer in 1904. ‘After this Virginia had her first of a series of nervous breakdowns. Each of them was signalled by horrible headaches and periods of self-accusation, and the nightmarish sensation that birds in the garden were speaking Greek and King Henry Vil was hiding in the gardening saying terrible, vulgar things to her. Nowadays, her mental disease are referred to as ‘bipolar disorder’ or ‘manic- depressions’ ~ characterised by violent swings from periods of elation and self-confidence to periods of severe depression when all the joys of previous times seem worthless. After her father’s death in 1904, Virginia and her sister Vanessa became leading figures in the so-called Bloomsbury Group, an avantgarde Circle based in the Stephen sisters’ home in Bloomsbury, an area of London, and concerned on antiimperialism and feminism. mn ly, in 1906, Virginia’s brother Thoby died of typhoid during a trip to Greece. ee 102 me Even though Virginia never really got over her brother's death, her life in Bloomsbury began to take shape. Other members of the group were the novelist. Leonard Woolf (who was active in socialism and wrote widely; he is most remembered for his five-volume autobiography in which he gives an intimate, even portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, his relationship with Virgi Woolf and discussions on his ideas for a new form of international government), the artist. Duncan Bell (who later married Virginia Woolt’s sister), the economist John Maynard Keynes, the novelist E.M. Forster and others. In August of 1912 she married Leonard Wool, even though, as she wrote him, ‘I feel no physical attraction to you... and yet your caring overwhelms me.’ Indeed, his great love for ia helped her to continue writing In 1917 the Woolfs founded Hogarth Press, Which Leonard hoped would distract his wife from her psychological demons, This publishing house became quite successful, not because the couple possessed great business acumen, but mostly because they published the works of their illustrious friends, including E.M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield and T.S. Eliot. They also published the works of Sigmund Freud, thereby introducing him to English readers, as well as all the i 4 works of Virginia Woolf herself, except for the first printing of The Voyage Out (1915). Unfortunately, Virginia Woolf's emotional problems continued, and in 1921 she suffered another severe nervous breakdown with ‘two whole months rubbed out. Long stays at Monk’s House, their home in the Sussex countryside, helped her to recover and she began one of her several masterpieces, To the Lighthouse, in this period. Despite the horrors of mental iliness, she wrote that ‘as an experience, madness is terrific... and in its lava | still find most of the things 1 write about.’ _In 1922 Virginia Woolf met the intellectual and aristocratic woman, Vita Sackville West, who fell deeply in love with her. Virginia Woolf, though, kept her distance for several years until she too developed a passion for Sackville-West. In the end, though, she remained faithful to Leonard. atria i aaa eA eg Ey Th co‘These years were also a period of great social and literary activity for her, and also of financial Success, Her books sold well: 6000 copies of Orlando and 10,000 of her long essay, A Room of One's Own. The couple lived well, but Virginia and Leonard were always aware that another nervous breakdown was possible. In the late thirties, as the political situation in Europe degenerated, the Woolfs were keenly aware of the dangers of Nazism and even signed a suicide pact to be carried out should the Nazis be victorious. In 1941, Virginia entered another ‘trough of despair’ from which she felt she could never escape. So, on March 27, she wrote two last letters, one to her sister Vanessa and one to Leonard. In her letter to Leonard she wrote, ‘Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. | fee! we can't go through another of those terrible times... I can’t fight any longer... I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.’ Then she walked to the River Ouse, put a large stone in her pocket and then drowned herself. Works. Virginia Woolf helped to expand the range of the modern novel with the technical means she employed to explore time, memory and the inner consciousness. James Joyce and Marcel Proust served as technical models for her novels, but she further developed their use of ‘stream of consciousness, or interior monologues, by portraying the consciousness of several persons with regard to one object or person; this achievement was tied to her belief that it was impossible to define character ~ it was, though, possible to present an approximate portrait of a character by showing how that character affects several other persons. She sought to show, ‘the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall,’ delineating ‘the pattern, however disconnected... in appearance, which each incident scores upon consciousness.’ What is more, in her novels, the plot itself is generated by the inner lives of her characters; this is a kind of reversal of the situation in earlier novels, where the thoughts of characters were presented more to illuminate external events and circumstances than for their own sake. Virginia Woolf also tried to portray the influence of time on an individual's consciousness, both as the series of discreet moments and the passing of years and centuries. In this she was greatly influenced by the French philosopher Henri — tiitish Literature 1900-1918 Bergson (1859-1941), who defined duration in his work Time and Free Will (1889) as the succession of conscious states, intermixing and unmeasured, Related to her interest in how the mind perceives times and events were her ideas concerning the differences between the minds of men and women. Basically she felt that the female mind was intuitive and that it could help free the male mind from its dependence on abstract, intellectual notions. Here first two novels, The Voyage Out (1915) and Might and Day (1919), are fairly traditional in form, but already in her third novel, Jacob’s Room (1922), she begins to portray her characters’ awareness of time present, time passing and historic time. Her next two novels, Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), are two of her masterpieces in which her technical mastery reveals the characters’ minds and what they experience in a highly convincing fashion. Both these novels deal with rather limited periods of time on the whole, the former with one day, and the latter, basically with two days, even though ten years pass between these two days. With Virginia Woolf's next novel, the historical fantasy Orlando (1929), she playfully presents her interest in time and gender by presenting a female character of the Elizabethan Age who endures through time up to 1928, but who, with each passing age, changes gender. The Waves (1951) is a kind of culmination of her technical experimentation; here she presents her six characters totally by means of interior monologues, and the point of this novel is the characters’ experience of the various periods of life from childhood to old age. Virginia Woolf also wrote two important jographies. One of them, Flush (1935), is partly fanciful, and recounts the lives of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning as seen through the eyes of Elizabeth Barrett's dog: and the other is of the art critic Roger Fry (1940). She also wrote many elegant and entertaining essays. The celebrated A Room of One’s Own (1929) talks of the difficulties a woman writer must face in a man’s world. Her equally popular collections of literary essays include The Common Reader (1925) and The Second Common Reader (1932). The Diary of Virginia Woolf (1977-84) was pub- lished in five volumes, and The Letters of Virginia Woolf (1975-80) in six volumes. ence | (03 nettWords, Words, Words ————— Mrs Dalloway (1925) M: Dalloway is considered Virginia Woolf's first masterpiece; it shows her using with great try interior monoloques in her distinctive fashion, Indeed, this novel seems to be a chorus of voices, of interior monologues that at certain points takes in all of London. It is through their thoughts that Virginia Woolf shows us the bonds that exist between people. The key figure of this story is, of course, Clarissa Dalloway, a London hostess in her 50s, who is married to a mediocre politician. The novel deals with one June day in the 1920s in London when Clarissa Dalloway is preparing one of her usual important dinner parties. Her thoughts take her back to the time when she was a young 1a Poster for the fin version of Mrs Woman and in love with Peter Walsh, whom she eventually abandoned to Datowey, starhg Voreces many Richard Dalloway. She also thinks about her great love for the rebellious ee and unconventional Sally Seton. Peter Walsh, who has just returned from India, pays a visit on Clarissa in the morning, and much of the novel deals with their memories of each other and how each one has remained an important presence in the other's life, even if they haven't seen each other for years. If part of the book shows us the bonds between people who actually know each other, Virginia Woolf, also reveals the bonds that tie together people who do not actually know each other. So, together with this day of Clarissa Dalloway, the author presents us with the day of Septimus Smith and his wife, Rezia. Septimus is a young veteran of the First World War who is suffering from mental illness because of his friend’s death in battle. So, the lives of Clarissa and Septimus are shown going on side by side on this day in June: Clarissa is preparing for her party; Septimus is preparing for his suicide. It Was Precisely Twelve O'clock The passage below begins precisely at noon, and describes Septimus Warren Smith’s visit to the great doctor Sir William Bradshaw. Pre-Reading Exercises 1, What does it mean if we say that someone is mad? 2. What psychological problems do you think young men returning home to England after having fought in the First World War might have had? It was precisely twelve o'clock; twelve by Big Ben; whose stroke was wafted' over the northern part of London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and wisps* of smoke and died up there among the seagulls — 5 twelve o'clock struck as Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed, and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street, 1. wafted: blown by the wind 1 eet ene ‘Twelve was the hour of their appointment. Probably, Rezia places of Somating thought that was Sir William Bradshaw’s house with the grey motor car in front of it. (The leaden circles dissolved in the air.) — 104 me10 25 30 35 45 55 Indeed it was — Sir William Bradshaw's motor car; low, power- ful, grey with the plain initials interlocked on the panel, as if the pomps of heraldry? were incongruous, this man being the ghostly helper, the priest of science; and, as the motor car was grey, 0, to match its sober suavity, grey furs, silver grey rugs were heaped* in it, to keep her ladyship’ warm while she waited. For often Sir William would travel sixty miles or more down into the country to visit the rich, the afflicted, who could afford the very large fee* which Sir William very properly charged for his advice. Her ladyship waited with the rugs about her knees an hour or more, leaning back, thinking sometimes of the patient, sometimes excusably, of the wall of gold, mounting minute by minute while she waited; the wall of gold that was mounting between them and all the shifis’ and anxieties (she had borne them bravely; they had had their struggles), until she felt wedged on a clam ocean, where only spice winds blow; respected, admired, envied, with scarcely anything left to wish for, though she regretted her stoutness"; large dinner-parties every Thursday night to the profession; an occasional bazaar’ to be opened; Royalty greeted; too little time, alas, with her husband, whose work grew and grew; a boy doing well at Eton; she would have liked a daughter too; interests she had, however, in plenty; child welfare; the after-care of the epileptic, and photography, so that if there was a church building, or a church decaying, she bribed” the sexton'', got the key and took photographs, which were scarcely to be distinguished from the work of professionals, while she waited. Sir William himself was no longer young. He had worked very hard; he had won his position by sheer ability (being the son of. a shop-keeper); loved his profession; made a fine figurehead at ceremonies and spoke well — all of which had by the time he was knighted given him a weary look (the stream of patients being so incessant, the responsibilities and privileges of his profession so onerous"), which weariness, together with his grey hairs, increased the extraordinary distinction and gave him the reputation (of the utmost importance in dealing with nerve cases”) not merely of lightning skill and infallible accuracy in diagnosis, but of sympathy; tact; understanding of the human soul. He could see the first moment they came into the room (the Warren Smiths they were called); he was certain directly he saw the man; it was a case of extreme gravity. It was a case of complete breakdown — complete physical and nervous breakdown, with every symptom in an advanced stage, ef ascertained in two or three minutes (writing answers to questions, murmured discreetly, on a pink card). How long had Dr. Holmes been attending" him? Six weeks. Prescribed alittle bromide'*? Said there was nothing the matter? See ek 3. pomps of heraldry: stentatious display of nobiity 4, heaped: piled 51 her ladyship: Lady Bradshaw, Sir Willam’s wife 6. fee: payment for professional services 7. shifts: expedients or tricks Used in difficult situations 8, stoutness: (euphemistc) fatness, corpulence 8, bazaar: market (here, an event where things are sold to benefit some charity) 410. bribed: gave money to (60 that he would do ‘something he should not hhave done; here, let her into the church) 11. sexton: caretaker or ‘custodian of a church 12, onerous: heavy, burdensome, démanding 19, nerve cases: expression of the period for mental problems 14, attending: taking care ofWords, Words, Words — 16. general p.actitioners: doctors who do not specialise n any partear 17, undo: correct 18. blunders: bad mistakes 49. shindy: uproar, row, ‘commation 20. generously worded letter: a letter saying very good ‘things about Septimus 21. exalted: high in rank, considered very important —$<$—— 106 ——— oo 65 70 15 85 95 100 ‘Ah yes (those general practitioners"! thought Sir William. It took half his time to undo" their blunders'*. Some were irreparable). “You served with great distinction in the War?” ‘The patient repeated the word ‘war’ interrogatively. He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind. A serious symptom to be noted on the card. “The War?’ the patient asked. The European War ~ that little shindy” of schoolboys with gunpowder? Had he served with distinction? He really forgot. In the War. itself he had failed. “Yes, he served with the greatest distinction,’ Rezia assured the doctor; ‘he was promoted.” “And they have the highest opinion of you at your office?’ Sir William murmured, glancing at Mr. Brewer’s very generously worded letter®, ‘So that you have nothing to worry you, no financial anxiety, nothing?” He had committed an appalling crime and been condemned to death by human nature. ‘Thave — I have,’ he began, “committed a crime —” ‘He has done nothing wrong whatever,’ Rezia assured the doctor. If Mr. Smith would wait, said Sir William, he would speak to Mrs. Smith in the next room. Her husband was very seriously ill, Sir William said. Did he threaten to kill himself? Oh, he did, she cried. But he did not mean it, she said. Of course not. It was merely a question of rest, said Sir William; of rest, rest, rest; a long rest in bed. There was a delightful home down in the country where her husband. would be perfectly looked after. Away from her? she asked. Unfortunately, yes; the people we care for ‘most are not good for us when we are ill. But he was not mad, was he? Sir William said he never spoke of ‘madness’; he called it not having a sense of proportion. But her husband did not like doctors. He would refuse to go there. Shortly and kindly Sir William explained to her the state of the case. He had threatened to kill himself, There was no alternative. It was a question of law. He would lie in bed in a beautiful house in the country. The nurses were admirable. Sir William would visit him once a week. If Mrs. ‘Warren Smith was quite sure she had no more questions to ask — he never hurried his patients ~ they would return to her husband. She had nothing more to ask — not of Sir William. So, they returned to the most exalted" of mankind; the criminal who faced his judges; the victim exposed on the heights; the fugitive; the drowned sailor; the poet of the immortal ode; the Lord who had gone from life to death; to Septimus Warren Smith, who sat in the arm-chair under the skylight staring at a photograph of Lady Bradshaw in Court dress, muttering messages about beauty. t.] To his patients he gave three quarters of an hour; and if in this exacting science which has to do with what, after all, we knowus nothing about ~ the nervous system, the human brain ~ a doctor oses his sense of proportion, as a doctor he fails. Health we must have; and health is proportion; so that when a man comes into ‘your room and says he is Christ (a common delusion), and has a ‘message, as they mostly have, and threatens, as they often do, to Kill himself, you invoke proportion; order rest in bed; rest in solitude; silence and rest; rest without friends, without books, without messages; six months’ rest; until a man who went in weighing seven stone six® comes out weighing twelve. Proportion, divine proportion, Sir William's. goddess, was acquired by Sir William walking hospitals®, catching salmon, begetting™ one son in Harley Street by Lady Bradshaw, who caught salmon herself and took photographs scarcely to be distinguished from the work of professionals. Worshipping proportion, Sir William not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of proportion — his, if they were men, Lady Bradshaw’s if they were women (she embroidered, knitted, spent four nights out of seven at home with her son), so that not only did his colleagues respect him, his subordinates fear him, but the friends and relations of his Patients felt for him the keenest* gratitude for insisting that these Prophetic Christs and Christesses, who prophesied the end of the world, or the advent of God, should drink milk in bed, as Sir William ordered; Sir William with his thirty years’ experience of these kinds of cases, and his infallible instinct, this is madness, this sense; his sense of proportion. ————— british Literature 1900-1918 22. seven stone six: ‘stone’ is ‘British unit of weight equal to 6.35 kilograms; ‘si’ refers to six ‘ounces’ 23. walking hospitals: doing his rounds in the hospital, walking through the hospital visiting his patients 24. begetting: fathering, having 25. keenest: greatest nell