Reading and Understanding Virginia Woolf

Transcription

1 Reading and Understanding Virginia Woolf I ve been told that as a writer it s my job to convey sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, emotions and all the rest of the experiences that make up the human condition as concisely and clearly as possible using the only tool in my proverbial arsenal: words. I realized early on that this is almost an impossible request to ask of a novice writer because words tend to fail since they do not exist in the physical word in which I try to represent with them. They are as changeable as the seasons, and as intangible as the wind and these, dear reader, are the only things I have to use to tell you about the affliction which I suffer from the world around me. I find that my strangely wired brain has some sort of abnormal capacity to comprehend the twisting and turning prose of writers who seem to suffer similar thought patterns to which I am prone and have written-it seems-word for word the offspring of such thoughts, transferring them to the page. I m in love. I find myself reluctant to admit that, since in all likelihood the love is unrequited, I am enamored with the works of Virginia Woolf. Now, I know she is not the most soft spoken of authors, living a strange and androgynous life that found its way inevitably into her prose, and that most of you, dear readers, have no idea at all what is happening. The sentences (not unlike my own) will run on and on for what may seem to you like pages, as she forces you to pay attention to a myriad of things at once.

2 It was related to me, not too long ago, in an article about the writings of Virginia Woolf, that she forces you to think about many things in one sentence and to keep those things in mind for the whole of it to make any sense. The casual reader will invariable find themselves at the end of such a sentence with no memory of how, or where, it started and to what purpose it fulfills. At a young age I was diagnosed with ADD, or, Attention Deficit Disorder. Now, the textbook definition of ADD is a person who may become distracted within a matter of minutes followed by inattentive behavior and an innate lack of organization (e.g. losing things), keeping track of time, completing tasks or making careless errors. If you will allow me a small personal moment to be candid-these people are shit filled, quack doctors who wish nothing more than to pump young children full of drugs to inhibit them from being children. Thank you. I will admit that sometimes I have trouble focusing on things and that my mind does tend to wander every now and then, but I can channel this strange ability-i like having a mind that is filled with many things at once-to make my writing more sensory, more detailed. I ll hazard a guess that Mrs. Woolf was also slightly ADD-and bipolar, neurotic and generally insane (which is why I love her), but that s neither here nor there-and used her ability to pay attention to many things at once to enhance the overall quality and effect of her work. If you have difficulty understanding the works of Virginia Woolf, fear not! And don t worry, you aren t stupid, or slow, or uncultured. In fact, you re probably intelligent and well read, it s just that, well, she s a tough author who asks a lot from her readers.

3 For example, from Moments of Being, the story Slater s Pins Have No Points is a story that, in real time, takes place in only a minute-maybe even just a few seconds. But, it s about eight pages long. This might be where the majority of readers will face confusion-is she having a flashback? Has the story suddenly gone somewhere else? Who is speaking? Everything you need to know is given to you in the very first sentence-which is four lines long. Slater s ins have no points-don t you always find that? said Miss Craye, turning round as the rose fell out of Fanny Wilmot s dress, and Fanny stooped, with her ears full of music, to look for the pin on the floor. Fanny Wilmot s rose-carnation later in the story but this really doesn t matter much-falls to the floor because the pin has fallen out of it. Miss Craye comments on this while music fills the air, and then Fanny starts looking for the pin on the floor. The next sentence reveals even more about the scene: Fugue. The words gave her an extraordinary shock, as Miss Craye struck the last chord of the Bach Now, you have to realize who is talking when Woolf says She. Usually, if she gives you a name after saying she it is the other female character s thoughts or expression. We know now that Fanny is taking a music lesson from Miss Craye and is shocked that she knows something as everyday as Slater s pins have no points since it is revealed later that Miss Craye is of higher birth, and does not know such humble things.

4 Virginia Woolf also jumps from present to past tense a lot during this story to illustrate the jump from real time to a memory or when a character is thinking something right at that moment. For example, on a further page Woolf makes the jump from an event Fanny is remembering another person say about Miss Craye to the present when we get into her internal point of view. Far more than I did! Said Miss Kingston brightly, writing her name across the stamp in her dashing, cheerful, full-bodied hand, for she had always been practical. Then: Perhaps then, Fanny Wilmot thought, looking for the pin, Miss Craye said that about Slater s pins having no pints, at a venture. You need to look out for present participle. I know that sounds extremely literary, but it s really not. Just look for pauses in the prose. Yes, the new paragraph does help, BUT, it s more important that you switch from a secondary character to a main character s point of view. These changes also help you realize where content has shifted. Now, like Virginia, I m going to jump around-between a few of her pieces, that is. From, A Haunted House, the story, A String Quartet is a very good example of how Woolf uses shifts in tense to illustrate shifts in perception-and an example of her long winded, information packed sentences. In the following passage--from a piece which is mostly autobiographical--woolf is telling the reader about her surroundings as well as the feeling she has towards hanging around with a distant relative.

5 If the mind s shot through by such little arrows, and--for human society compels it--no sooner is one launched than another presses forward; if this engenders heat and in addition they ve turned on the electric light; if saying one thing does, in so many cases, leave behind it a need to improve and revise, stirring besides regrets, pleasures, vanities, and desires--if it s all the facts I mean, and the hats, the fur boas, the gentlemen s swallow-tail- coats, and pearl tiepins that come to the surface--what chance is there? Alright, this is just ONE sentence. And trust me, I realize how hard this is to follow--especially in the language of the time--but, as Woolf likes to say, words are fickle things that change as time does. It s helpful when reading passages like this to treat semi-colons as periods. That way you can absorb whatever Woolf has just told you. It s important to keep in mind, though, that whatever follows that semi-colon is following the same train of thought as the previous statement. If you keep this in mind, the previous passage would look like this: If the mind s shot through by such little arrows, and--for human society compels it--no sooner is one launched than another presses forward. If this engenders heat and, in addition, they ve turned on the electric light. If saying one thing does, in so many cases, leave behind it a need to improve and revise, stirring besides regrets, pleasures, vanities, and desires-if it s all the facts I mean, and the hats, the fur boas, the gentlemen s swallow-tail coats, and pearl tie-pins that come to the surface--what chances is there. Now, if that is still confusing to you, which it may be--and don t feel bad if it is--then perhaps you should try, at first, to skip things within the dashes (--) and read them at the end of that statement:

6 -if saying one thing does, in so many cases, leave behind it a need to improve and revise, stirring besides regrets, pleasures, vanities, and desires (then) what chance is there? If it s all the facts I mean, and the hats, the fur boas, the gentlemen s swallow-tail coats, and pearl tie-pins that come to the surface. See what I did here? By reading the core information and keeping the aside for the end of the statement the overall message of that sentence becomes more clear to the reader. Having learned this new technique, please, try it out by reading the non-edited sentence again and see how much more sense it makes. Now, keep all this in mind while reading a few sentences from the title story of A Haunted House. This one is--to me anyway--a very interesting take on stream of consciousness writing. It changes tenses multiple times throughout, changes unclearly from close 3rd person narrator to first person and gives you disjointed images of things that may or may not relate to each other. It does make sense once you read it all the way through. The trick to reading this one is to see every image Woolf gives you to see. If she says: But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface, the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. See it. See that beam of sunlight breaking the dark canopy of close knit trees and then that same fire sinking below the window pane through the glass. But, that s what I see, if you see something different that s fine, just keep that image in your head as a reference when you read the next section of the piece. Woolf is an extremely visual writer, so if you breeze through a sentence you ll probably have no idea what the next one is about or how it connects to it s predecessor.

7 For example, the next sentence in this paragraph will only make sense, will only reveal it s true meaning if you paid attention to the previous one! Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. That glass that separated her from the beam of light--that ethereal and captivating image--was just as tangible, as physical, as the barrier that separated her and the ghosts. Were you paying attention? I hope so. So there are three main parts to the lesson here. Woolf likes to change tenses on you whenever she feels like it, throwing the reader into another time, place or scene. Look out for those tricky little participles, or action verbs, that imply either past and present--say vs. said, or looked vs. looking. Also, don t be confused by the excessive, beautiful, use of grammar. If certain sentences run on for more than five lines using semi-colons, dashes, commas and other conjunctive grammar use periods in order to pause while reading in order to keep track of what you re seeing--replace semi-colons with periods and overlook things in dashes, coming back to them at the end of the sentence. Lastly, be patient! Virginia expects a lot from her readers, so don t feel like you need to rush through sentences. They re packed full of images for a reason, so take your time and see whatever the page is giving you to see. Keep those images in your mind while moving on to the next sentence and the previous one will make more sense. And don t ever be afraid to look up words that you don t know because some of them tend to fall out of style. I hope this has helped you better understand the writings of Virginia Woolf. Now, with your newfound knowledge, try reading this last excerpt from A Haunted House.

8 Desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a few rods, for ever desiring--(a cry starts to the left, another to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Omnibuses conglomerate in conflict)- -for ever desiring--(the clock asseverates with twelve distinct strokes that it is midday; light sheds gold scales; children swarm)--for ever desiring truth.