Wouter’s Comments (group member since Dec 30, 2012)

Wouter’s comments from the Moments of Reading: A Virginia Woolf Reading Group group.

Between the Acts was Virginia Woolf's final novel. It was written under the upcoming threat of invasion by the Germans in 1941 the same year Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the river Ouse. Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf's husband, was a Jew and they agreed they would commit suicide when the Germans would take over England. In her introduction to the novel Gillian Beer states that "With Orlando, Between the Acts is Woolf's most mischievous and playful work, as well as one that muses upon death and extinction."

The novel starts in 1939 just before the outbreak of the Second World War. The main characters don't notice it right away, but it looms in the background in Woolfian descriptions. The novel focuses a lot on the communal and the future of England: "Woolf wants to explore how England came to be; and how it came to be as she described in in Three Guineas, patriarchal, imperialist, and class ridden. Between the Acts acknowledges those characteristics, but face with the probable obliteration of people, landscape, and history in war, Woolf sought to produce another idea of England, one might survive, but survive without portentousness - as mixture and common place." (Beer, p. xxxiv).

The following themes, motifs and elements could be incorporated while reading the novel.

Death and extinction – With the Second World War coming near Woolf explores the idea of extinction; the end of history, the end of repetition: “emptiness and silence are the shaping shadows behind language” (Beer, p. xxvii).

Repetition - With the focus in the pastoral, the pageant, the novel explores repetition, the promise of continuance, the ineluctable passing of time. This is represented in the acts and words used in Between the Acts. Language also promises continuance, perhaps because language needs time to exist. So as long language exists, time exists and no extinction has taken place.

Communal and community - When Virginia Woolf lived in Monk’s House in Rodmell, she found herself an outsider of the village and she tried to involve herself. However, the plays practised and performed in the village were too shallow for her. The communal has its attraction, yet community has also brought the country into the state of war.

Opposites - With the previous theme and motifs ‘opposites’ should not be overseen: repetition versus obliteration, language versus silence, past versus present, change versus continuance. But opposites also seems to cancel each other’s meaning.

Language - One of the pivotal themes of Woolf’s novels is language; words and sounds. Gillian Beer tells us: “rhyme makes the ear arbiter of significance”. Gossip, pageant, sounds, new words, historical context and meaning, Woolf explores, again, the significance and mystery of the reality of language.

Reality - “what’s real: that which is embodied? what is believed? or what’s acted? Close to Woolf’s fascination of language is her fascination of reality. What is this thing called reality wherein we live our lives, have our parties, our frustrations, our fears and our happiness?

The novel doesn't have any chapters so I have divided the novel, quite rudimentary, into four parts. Each part will take a week so readers have enough time to let the words sink in, get ideas and reread more complicated parts.

Reading parts:

15th April 2013 - Part 1: pages 1 - 36 (up to 'She heard laughter, down among the bushes, where the terrace dipped to the bushes.')

22nd April 2013 - Part 2: pages 36 - 72 (up to 'It's time to go')

29th April 2013 - Part 3: pages 72 - 103(up to '...followed the procession off the stage').

6th May 2013 - Part 4: pages 103 - 130

Ofcourse you are not forced to incorporate the themes and motifs in your reading. Feel free just to enjoy the novel on your own terms.

Between the Acts is not the best novel to start reading Virginia Woolf. I would advise new readers of Virginia Woolf to start with Mrs Dalloway or maybe even To the Lighthouse. However, Between the Acts is not a very difficult read. But without taking notice of typical Woolfian elements it can become a tedious read.

Reading starts on the 8th of April, no reader has committed him- or herself to join the read, but I will start anyways :).

Interesting link. I'm still very busy, but I hope I'm able to write my final report by the end of next week.

Meanwhile the offical end date for the novel has long past and I will start a new thread which novel we will read next.

We are entering the final week. I have finished the novel, but I will wait with my final comments until upcoming Friday.

Any questions on Virginia Woolf and her works which do not concern the current group read or a novel taht has been read before. Post those questions in their appropriate folders.

I had two very busy weeks, but I have been able to catch up again.

Being in chapter V I can start reflecting on my original question: "How Virginia Woolf created a convincing novel with such fantastic elements." And the answer really seems, because almost nobody cares. Even the staff at her home in England seem to travel through time without explanation.

Two favourite parts reminded me of the part "Time Passes" in To the Lighthouse".

1)"Change was incessant, and change perhaps would never cease. High battlements of thought, habits that had seemed as durable as stone, went down like shadows at the touch of another mind and left a naked sky and fresh stars twinkling in it."
Orlando, chapter IV

2)"But what was worse, damp now began to its way into every house -- damp, which is the most insidious of all enemies, for while the sun can be sht out by blinds, and the frost roasted by a hot fire, damp steals in while we sleep; damp is silent, imperceptible, ubiquitous. Damp swells the wood, furs the kettle, rusts the iron, rots the stone. So gradual is the process, that it is not until we pick up some chest of drawers, coal scuttle, and the whole thing drops to pieces in our hands, that we suspect even that the disease is at work."
Orlando, chapter V

Virginia Woolf uses damp like the darkness in To the Lighthouse as a swallowing sea to represent the passing of time; the crumbling of reality:

"Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jar and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say 'This is he' or 'This is she'."
To the Lighthouse, "Time Passes"

And having that in mind, reminds me of my thesis where I noticed Virginia Woolf often uses trees or wood to give her characters solid ground or footing. It appears that "The Oak Tree" is one of the few solid elements throughout the novel. Time is like the swallowing sea (the 'damp'), The Oak Tree is the lifeline, or drift wood in that matter, which Orlando keeps close and travels with him/her through time (maybe even keep him/her sane?).

When I read chapter IV, I understood Jimmy's comments in the general topic where he stated that:

"Towards the middle, the "autobiographer's" voice started sounding very much like the "lecturer's" voice in A Room of One's Own, in fact, I was surprised at the similarity in tonality between the two works. It had that same quality of breaking the third wall, of creating a make-believe scenario that was obviously not true, and also of slightly didactic 'here's what I want to say on the topic of the sexes'"

Woolf often tells about gender difference rather than showing it, but I disagree on Jimmy's claim that the novel is an essay from the very beginning. Orlando is a biography with strong feminist elements not the other way around.

I really liked the part where Woolf states:

"...there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking...Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above." (Orlando, chapter IV)

Maybe this is one of the main ideas behind Orlando: Orlando changes sex, but not character; s/he remains a human being who develops his/her character throughout his/her life. Being a man or woman only differs because people make them different, .i.e. the clothes that have connotations towards certain ideas of man and woman.

This topic is meant for links to interesting articles or material. If you have found an interesting article I will add it to this post.

Video:

The Recorded Voice Of Virginia Woolf

Reading:

NewStatesman Shape shifter: The joyous transgressions of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

Berfrois: Names, Texts and WWI in To the Lighthouse

The Guardian:

Virginia Woolf letter urging friend to go on living goes to auction

BBC Culture
Between the Acts: Virginia Woolf's last book

Images:


The Guardian Portraits of Virginia Woolf: here, the true face of the modern writer

Original papers:

Smith College Libraries: Woolf in the World: A Pen and a Press of Her Own
Page Proofs of To The Lighthouse

I think that's all in the eye of the beholder, though madness and genius are also close together. How can you decide what is truth or profound in poetry? When are you dealing with a poet, and when with a charlatan?

For me the novel read more like a snapshot after snapshot (although Woolfian, it is more present than in To the Lighthouse for example). The novel is different yet has similarities:

"After an hour or so - the sun was rapidly sinking, the white clouds had turned red, the hills were violet, the woods purple, the valleys black - a trumpet sounded. Orlando leapt to his feet. The shrill sound came from the valley. It came from a dark spot down there; a spot compact and mapped out; a maze; a town, yet girt about with walls; it came from the heart of his own great house in the valley, which, dark before, even as he looked and the single trumpet duplicated and reduplicated itself with other shriller sounds, lost its darkness and became pierced with lights."

For me this is quintessential Virginia Woolf: the impressions from the senses.

It struck me, like Kristen, that Orlando shifts from the common man to the artist and back. As for the connection with Vita, I only have to do it with the footnotes of the Penguin edition, so I get an inkling of the connection between the two.

New date: 25 January - Chapter 2
(new readers are welcome to join us!)

As you have "the letters" and kirsten is reading them perhaps you could talk about that next Friday (In what way is Orlando Vita and in what way is he not?)

I would prefer a slow read, but we could also agree to discuss one chapter a week. Which means that people who want to read faster can read ahead. But during the discussion keep in mind that you don't refer to future chapters because that would spoil it for the rest. This would also give new readers the opportunity to join us.

So:
18th January chapter I

I believe she had A Room of One's Own in her mind while writing Orlando, so that could explain that.

It's now the 8th of January so in three days time I would like to officially start the reading. I have never participated in a reading group before so I have no idea how this normally goes. Would you like a short discussion when we are half-way through the novel, a chat or conversation on Skype or a final thought discussion on the novel?

Virginia Woolf once said that Orlando was a "writer's holiday". The novel is meant to be comical but more high brow than slapstick. It is really different from To the Lighthouse or Mrs Dalloway but it contains Woolfian elements like time, moment of being, patriarchal/matriarchal family and bisexualism.

I don't want to put the discussion towards cross-reference between different literary works, but we could get into that after we enjoyed the novel and see how far we want to go. Brings me back to the original question, why Orlando?

This will be the first book by Virginia Woolf read by the group.

My suggestion would be to start not on the first of January, but get a discussion first.

Maybe we could start reading on the 11th of January (depending on our discussion).

My first question would be, why Orlando?

I think Orlando didn't really interest me at university because I was much more into the poetic language of "The Waves" and "To the Lighthouse". But now, 8 years later, I'm curious how I find the novel. I will mostly be interested in how Virginia Woolf created a convincing novel with such fantastic elements.


"Yesterday morning I was in despair...I couldn't screw a word from me; and at last dropped my head un my hands: dipped my pen in the ink, and wrote these words, as if automatically, on a clean sheet: Orlando: A Biography. No sooner had I done this than my body was flooded with rapture and my brain with ideas. I wrote rapidly till 12...But listen; suppose Orlando turns out to be Vita..."
(Letter to Vita Sackville-West, 9 Oct. 1927, Letters, III, pp. 428-29)

One of the main themes of Orlando is transsexualism, bisexualism and transvestism. How much this involves Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, I leave open for discussion, but the topic constantly re-appears in Woolf's novels. I would dislike focusing on the comparison between the characters of Orlando with Woolf and Sackville-West, but wouldn't mind a more general discussion on that theme.