Women's Classic Literature Enthusiasts discussion
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Night and Day
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Week 1: Chapters I - IX
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Viv
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Oct 31, 2016 04:03AM
This thread is for discussions of chapters I-IX.
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While on a recent road trip to the Okanagan region of BC, Can, I popped in one of my favourite used books stores (http://www.bookspenticton.com/finding...) to see if I could find a copy of this book. I didn't, but I did find a copy of Virginia Woolf: Introductions to the Major Works. While reading the Julia Briggs introduction to this collections of introductions, I was plunged immediately into the feminism in in Woolf's work, struck by her identification in the earliest works that "there are things she cannot say, things men will not allow her to say.." While chewing over this idea, quite by coincidence, I came across a young poet who is dealing today with exactly this issue. This is a very powerful, moving video. Although I am just beginning to delve into Night and Day, I think this poem is very relevant to our discussions of this book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeoLR...
Ginny - thanks so much for sharing this poem - powerful stuff!
yes, very powerful and inspiring poem and very fitting for this book...thanks for sharing
Katharine is nearly 30 years old and living at home. Her life with her parents is described and referred to many times in this section. Her mother is described flitting about the room dusting the books, then the parallel is made with her writing: "These spells of inspiration never burnt steadily, but flickered over the gigantic mass of the subject as capricious as a will-o'-the-wisp, lighting now on this point, now on that." Katharine provides the details for her mother's conversation, and supervises the details of the house-keeping. Have they deliberately limited Katharine's life?
I think you are right, Ginny. Katharine certainly seems to live quite a sheltered/restricted life, especially given that she is not a young girl.I really enjoy the way Woolf describes people. I just loved this, about Mrs Hilbery: "She was a remarkable looking woman, well advanced in the sixties, but owing to the lightness of her frame and the brightness of her eyes she seemed to have been wafted over the surface of the years without taking much harm in the passage." Wonderful!
What do people think about Ralph? He seems to me to have something of a chip on his shoulder about class - for example in chapter IV, he says "I think you make a system of saying disagreeable things, Miss Hilberry. I suppose it's one of the characteristics of your class. They never talk seriously to their inferiors." I don't think Katharine had been treating him as an inferior!
I like Mary a lot. I love that she is darning stockings at the same time as doing her work. She seems such a sensible and capable figure!
Ginny wrote: "Katharine is nearly 30 years old and living at home. Her life with her parents is described and referred to many times in this section. Her mother is described flitting about the room dusting the b..."I am not sure that I think they have deliberately limited Katharine's life. It seems it may be simply who they are, and how they are living their lives. In a way, it seems that her parents are weak individuals, both relying upon Katharine. While her mother needs Katharine to help her stay focused, her father leaves it to Katharine to tell her mother about "Cyril's misbehavior." I am wondering if Katharine feels stuck until something better comes along to change her circumstances, even if it might not be what she truly wants; and I am thinking she does not know what she truly wants.
Viv wrote: "I think you are right, Ginny. Katharine certainly seems to live quite a sheltered/restricted life, especially given that she is not a young girl.I really enjoy the way Woolf describes people. I j..."
Mary is a good character, one who lives her life according to her circumstances at the time: when she is at the office, she is working; and when she is at home, she is at home tending to those things, such as darning socks or entertaining guests.
Mary and Katharine share a wonderfully intimate conversation:"They both looked out of the window, first up at the hard silver moon, stationary among a hurry of little grey-blue clouds, then down upon the roofs of London, with all their upright chimneys, and then below them at the empty moonlit pavement of the street, upon which the joint of each paving-stone was clearly marked out. Mary saw Katharine raise her eyes again to the moon, with a contemplative look in them, as though she were setting that moon against the moon of other nights, held in memory."So far, I find I am much more interested in this friendship than that with either of the men. Mary is very interested in who Katharine is, while Ralph's "will-power was rigidly set upon a single object--that Miss Hilbery should obey him." Ouch!
I finally got to start this and just love it. Reading Woolf's beautiful writing in a conventional plot is heaven to me.About Ralph, for some reason I am picturing him like the character Gordon Comstock in George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying. He has an edge but I like him a lot.
I like them all, actually! I thought this bit tells us so much about Mary:
“She was robbing no one of anything, and yet, to get so much pleasure from simple things, such as eating one’s breakfast alone in a room which had nice colours in it, clean from the skirting of the boards to the corners of the ceiling, seemed to suit her so thoroughly that she used at first to hunt about for someone to apologize to, or for some flaw in the situation.”
I get the feeling we'll be exploring feminism with Katharine's still-living-at-home character. I like Kimberley's comment above about it being just the way they are, and Katharine not knowing what she wants. I agree!
So excited to continue reading this. (Just running very short on time lately!)
Haven't read the comments yet. Just wanted to say I've just started. My first Woolf!
Kathleen wrote: "I finally got to start this and just love it. Reading Woolf's beautiful writing in a conventional plot is heaven to me.About Ralph, for some reason I am picturing him like the character Gordon Co..."
I like Ralph, as well. He seems to me to be trying to find himself as well. He lives at home with his family, but I get the impression he wants to find himself as well. And, aren't we all at that age, truly? But, I do not think we always realize that that is what we are doing while we are in the middle of things. And, some of us make hasty decisions that affect the rest of our lives. I am looking forward to learning how these characters work things out.
I got a really late start on this, but I'm quite enjoying it! Someone told me that this is representative of Virginia Woolf's "Jane Austen period" and I can sort of see those influences in the humor and the social commentary.For example the first sentence, "It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied." That just sets the scene so beautifully!
Or the satire of, "It may be said, indeed, that English society being what it is, no very great merit is required, once you bear a well-known name, to put you into a position where it is easier on the whole to be eminent than obscure."
And then this ironical summation of so many women's lives, "Katharine, thus, was a member of a very great profession which has, as yet, no title and very little recognition, although the labor of mill and factory is, perhaps, no more severe and the results of less benefit to the world. She lived at home."
And then the revelation of her shameful secret love, "she rose early in the morning or sat up late at night to . . . work at mathematics." The horror!
I think I am absolutely going to love this! It's delicious!
There's really a ton here about women's place in society. That a woman who earns her own living takes on a different look. That a woman can both read books and darn stockings. That "the consciousness of being both of them women made it unnecessary to speak to her" (because of comfort? or because of unimportance?). That a person needs a profession in order to be taken seriously. That an unmarried woman is only half alive. And the statement that a woman running her own life is odious (when that is what every man is clearly aspiring to do).And the description of the guy lecturing about metaphor was really funny! And I also loved this line: "for beneath all her education she preserved the anxieties of one who owns china."
Well, I just finished the first part without any sense of where this is going to go next. I have seen this described as a "love story," but I have no idea who might be going to be falling in love with whom. Katharine seems dreamily interested in the possibility of love (that wonderfully erotic waterfall image of hers) but seems to have no interest at all in either of the two men we've met. Mary seems to have admitted to herself that she's in love with Ralph, but seems determined to fight it. William wants to marry Katharine but we don't really know anything about his feelings. And Ralph's obsession with Katharine seems obsessively unreal and not based on any actual knowledge of her.It's fun not knowing what will come next, but I suspect the underlying theme of the role of women in pre-suffrage England will continue. I'm absolutely delighted with this so far.
I've really enjoyed your thoughts here Alexa! I'm almost done with the second part and am still enchanted. I think this is a love story with a special Virginia Woolf spin.Loved this Mrs. Hilbery line from the end of this section:
“’What is nobler,’ she mused, turning over the photographs, ‘than to be a woman to whom every one turns, in sorrow or difficulty? How have the young women of your generation improved upon that, Katharine? … But they did more than we do, I sometimes think. They were, and that’s better than doing.’”
"They were, and that's better than doing." Such wonderful irony. Better to be a figure on a pedestal who simply accepts adoration than an actual actor, a mover, a doer. Better to be the empty receptacle of others' opinions than a former of one's own opinions! Somehow I don't believe that's what Virginia Woolf herself believed. But to so graciously clothe the social commentary!
Yes. Well, Woolf has made Mrs. Hilbery a kind of pathetic character, one who clearly isn't any good at "doing" and shows her trying here to justify herself, knowing the reader will see through it maybe.
Alexa wrote: "Katharine seems dreamily interested in the possibility of love (that wonderfully erotic waterfall image of hers) but seems to have no interest at all in either of the two men we've met.."Yes. Water literally flows through the imagery . Both Katharine and Ralph are in love with an imaginary person, but Katharine's lover has no particular object, while Ralph is dreaming of an imaginary Katharine: "...he had been much at the mercy of a phantom Katharine, who came to him when he sat alone, and answered him as he would have her answer, .."
Just finished this section. Beautifully descriptive & (of course!) reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield. But maybe this style of writing is better suited to short stories & novellas.
