English
118 - "Life Writings"English
118 - "Life Writings"(For this paper, you may combine an autobiographical experiment, say of a couple of pages, with a two or three-page long critical commentary. They could be separate papers; that is, they do not have to be related or 'continuous'.)
Autobiographical Experiments:
•A character study/portrait
(examples in WD include 36-7; 82-3; 134-5; 192-3)
•An extended dialogue, (ventriloquised) monologue, or paraphrased multiple-
party conversation (examples 32-3; 116; 214)
•An event or incident [walking streets of London on Armistice Day, pp.17-19;
recreating an extended visit (as hers with Thomas Hardy); her account of solar
eclipse; of seeing a random (and presumably fatal) car accident; attempt to
recreate a sense of 'party-consciousness'/of people in groups, p.74]
•Parody/imitation + critical commentary
•Philosophical reflection (10, 45-6, 84-5, 129, 138, 144, 179)
•Description
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Critical commentaries/analyses:
•Reflections on patterns discerned in VW's Writer's Diary (WD);
imagery, impressions, ideas (anchored in details, quotes); reflections could
be focused quite specifically or could be more general thoughts "Upon First
Reading VW's A Writer's Diary," if supported with specific details, quotes,
etc.; or they could focus on particular entries and 'argue for' their importance,
the insights they give into VW, her work, times, into writing....
•Reflections after comparing certain WD excerpts with the full entries
in the original diaries
•Virginia Woolf and the Body -- senses, illnesses, sexuality, appearances
(clothes, cosmetics, beauty or lack thereof), shyness/self-consciousness, her
'curious nervous system'; or Woolf on other people's bodies - the physicality
of her descriptions, portraits...
•Juxtaposing WD (and other Diary?) entries concerning particular
scenes or parts of the novels she is working on with the ms. versions (with
revisions) of those scenes/passages (in Rare Book Room) to develop deeper sense
of her writing 'process', or simply juxtapose her comments in WD as she
struggles with these scenes/passages with the finished, published scenes/passages
and discuss connections and/or gaps between diary descriptions and final versions
(For example: Mrs. Dalloway opening; To the Lighthouse, middle
section called "Time Passes"; ending of The Waves; could use WD
and other Diary indices to locate entries on particular novels)
•Find out more about particular people VW writes about in WD (or
in the complete Diaries), for example, her father, Leslie Stephen, her
brother Thoby, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, Vita Sackville West. How does this
what you learn from this research enrich your reading of the relevant entries
in the Diaries? What information do you think is particularly important
for readers of the WD to know in order to understand the WD entries
more fully (and perhaps to evaluate VW's 'reliability')?
MORE POSSIBLE TOPICS ON WOOLF + SOME ON WOOLF AND LESSING
•On p. 303 of the
Writer's Diary, Woolf writes: "I have been thinking about Censors. How
visionary figures admonish us. That's clear in a [manuscript] I'm reading. If
I say this, So-and-so will think me sentimental. If that...will think me bourgeois.
All books now seem to me surrounded by a circle of invisible censors. Hence
their selfconsciousness, their restlessness. It would be worth while trying
to discover what they are at the moment."
-->It might be worth while as you write
whatever you write this term to think from time to time about the "invisible
censors" surrounding you and to discover, if you can, "what they are at the
moment."
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•Woolf opens "Sketch of the Past" with an extended evocation of her 'first
memory'; then, she goes on to evoke another 'foundational memory.' For her,
these are "color/sound memories"; that is, they are synesthetic. "If I were
a painter, " she observes, "I'd paint these first impressions in [then she lists
certain colors]" (66). Next, she describes the sounds associated with that particular
memory. Lessing also constructs, early on in her autobiography (pp. 18ff), her
earliest memories and contrasts a 'real' memory with 'deduced' memories (p.31)
and 'memories' created by what others told her or stimulated by looking at old
photographs.
-->What are your first memories? Are they "color/sound
memories," like Woolf's? Can you tell if they are, in Lessing's sense, "real"
memories?
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•On p. 80 of "A Sketch of the Past," Woolf notes that until she was in
her forties she was obsessed by her mother's "presence." [Her mother died when
Woolf was 13.] "I could hear her voice, see her, imagine what she would do or
say as I went about my day's doings," Woolf recalls. She was one of the invisible
presences who after all play so important a part in every life. This influence,
by which I mean the consciousness of other groups impinging upon ourselves;
public opinion, what other people say and think; all those magnets which attract
us this way to be like that, or repel us the other and make us different from
that; has never been analysed in any of those Lives which I so much enjoy reading,
or [have been only] very superficially [analysed]. "Yet, " Woolf adds, "it is
by such invisible presences that the'subject of this memoir' is tugged this
way and that every day of his life." [I]t is they that keep him in position.
Consider what immense forces society brings to play upon each of us, how that
society changes from decade to decade; and also from class to class; well, if
we cannot analyse these invisible presences, we know very little of the subject
of the memoir; and again how futile life-writing becomes. I see myself as a
fish in a stream; deflected; held in place; but cannot describe the stream.
-->Here Woolf seems to be expanding her notion of
"invisible censors," "visionary figures" that she mentioned in Writer's Diary.
Now the notion includes "other groups impinging upon ourselves; public opinion"
and the "immense forces society brings to play upon each of us." In what ways
does Lessing consider these presences and forces? Would she agree with Woolf
that she "cannot describe the stream" in which, like fish, we are swimming for
our lives, "deflected," but also "held in place" by all these invisible presences
and forces?
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*On p. 72, Woolf says that it is her 'shock-receiving capacity' that makes her
a writer. On p. 142 she says that "we are sealed vessels afloat upon what it
is convenient to call reality; at some moments, without a reason, without an
effort, the sealing matter cracks; in floods reality; that is, a sceneÐfor they
would not survive entire so many ruinous years unless they were made of something
permanent; that is a proof of their 'reality'. " "Is this liability of mine
to scene receiving the origin of my writing impulse? [she asks herself]....[I]n
all the writing I have done (novels, criticism, biography) I almost always have
to find a scene; either when I am writing about a person, I must find a representative
scene in their lives; or when I am writing about a book, I must find the scene
in their poems or novels. Or is this not quite the same faculty?"
-->These are, I think, major insights on Woolf's
part into her own creative process, though she doesn't allow herself to dwell
upon them for long. What do you make of them? Do they give you any deeper understanding
of Woolf as a writer? Do they have any bearing on you and your own writing process?
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•Memories of inhabiting certain places or spaces generate large sections
of Woolf's "Sketch." The first is what she calls "the cathedral space of childhood,"
which mainly involves Talland House in St. Ives (Cornwall) and the Hyde Park
Gate house in London. Individual rooms (such as the nursery or her father's
study) sometimes briefly appear, or more intimate spaces such as the space under
the dining room (?) table where she and Vanessa used to play or the hallway
with the mirror, or special outdoor spaces, such as the garden. Eventually,
she creates a thumbnail sketch of the layout of the Hyde Park Gate house and
uses it to structure her account of a typical day in her family's life around
the turn of the century. Lessing notes that, especially for children (but not
only for them?), houses on the same street or in the same neighborhood and even
individual rooms within a house can be almost like separate worlds, each with
its own "atmosphere" or distinctive personality (p. 138). And, of course, Lessing's
evocation of her childhood experience of "the bush" (pp. 116ff) is one of the
highlights of her autobiography (and perhaps of modern autobiography in general).
--> With these examples in mind, you might try to
evoke a house, a room, a space, indoors or outdoors, that has some special resonance
for you.
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•On p. 147 of "Sketch," Woolf writes: "If I had the power to lift out a
single day as we lived it in 19--".... She then proceeds to give us a kind of
cross-section of a typical day in the life inside "the cage," which is what
the Hyde Park Gate house had largely become for her by 1900, when she was a
young woman of 18.
-->What if you had this power to lift a single day
out of life as you lived it in 19--? Could you write a 'sketch' using this approach?
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•On p. 78 of "Sketch," Woolf asks herself, of her memories, "what has remained
interesting?"
-->Well? Of the memories that tend to come to your
mind, which remain interesting to you at this point in your lives?
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•On p. 155 of "Sketch," Woolf recalls a particularly humiliating evening
at a dance party. "But at the same time I recall that the good friend who is
with me still, upheld me," she notes; "that sense of the spectacle; the dispassionate
separate sense that I am seeing what will be useful later; I could even find
the words for the scene as I stood there."
This comment seems related to her
sense that it is because of her scene-making capacity that she is a writer.
Apparently, scenes not only come to her through memory and imagination; even
as she lives through (endures or enjoys) various experiences, they at times
take on the quality of a 'spectacle' or scene. At these times, she experiences
a splitting of the self, but one that seems reassuring, not threatening. The
'good friend' within her helps to distance her from the immediate impact of
the event or the intensity of her emotions, but this distance, instead of blurring
or blocking impressions, seems to heighten them, shape them into a 'scene',
and preserve them in her memory. This may be somewhat related to "special moments"
(p.120) that Lessing describes, moments when she sees with unusual clarity (and
separates herself from what she sees), and tells herself to remember this, and
not to become like those people, or not to give in to whatever it is that she
is defining herself against.
-->The comparisons here between Woolf and Lessing
might be interesting to pursue, if only to see more precisely where they break
down. This inquiry would probably yield important insights into each writer's
uniqueness. It also might be interesting to recreate such split-self scenes
yourself, if you have had such experiences.
ENGLISH 118 - POSSIBLE
TOPICS
PAPER #2
4-5 page minimum: may
be analytical, autobiographical, or a combination [at least one paper for the
term has to be primarily analytical]; due Wednesday, March 15
•Lessing thinks that the year she was born, 1919, had a profound impact
on the rest of her life, because of what was happening at the time [the end
of a catastrophic war that left "half of Europe a graveyard" and deeply affected
her parents for the rest of their lives]. What was going on in the world when
you were born? Do you think that the state of the world at the time of your
birth has had a significant impact on your life thus far?
•Lessing says it took her many years to realize that her parents did not love their parents, and that when she finally did fully comprehend this fact, it changed how she saw her parents, how she understood their attitudes and behavior. Similar reflections might be worth pursuing in an autobiographical context. oAn overview and evaluation of criticism so far on Lessing's Under My Skin (using MLA bibliography, Lexus-Nexus, etc.)....
•Lessing's essay "My Father" and her portrait of her father in Under My Skin -- In what ways are these portraits of her father consistent, despite the change of forms and the time gap; in what ways are they different? Does one version seem 'truer' than the others? If so, why?
•Compare Lessing's depictions of 'the bush' and/or race relations in one of her African Stories with depictions of the same subjects in the early chapters of Under My Skin. What remains constant? How would you account for the differences?
•Favored, Furious Daughters: Rich's portrait of her father, Arnold Rich in "Split at the Root" and/or "When We Dead Awaken"; Woolf's portraits of her father, Leslie Stephen, in relevant diary entries, "A Sketch of the Past," and, if you wish, her essay "Leslie Stephen"
•Betrayals/denials - by word, deed, or silence (Rich and/or Derricotte and/or your own experience]
•Did you ever "pass" for ___ (fill in the blank as appropriate), or wish that you could? Can you begin to evoke and analyze those experiences or desires as Rich or Derricotte do in their respective works?
•Reflections on and analyses of various social prejudices you encountered, and perhaps internalized, as you were growing up
•Fragmented selves
[an essay comparing the writers in this regard, and/or perhaps an autobiographical
inquiry into the nature of your own internal 'splits'.
Woolf
writes in her diary that sometimes she likes being "Virginia," but that life
only becomes "green" again when she's alone and writing well, when she's raised
up the walls of her "magic world"; yet, she notes, "one must combine." Lessing's
behavior is often wildly 'self'-contradictory, as she would be the first to
admit. She also often refers to her "Tigger" self, as if this self is somehow
apart from who she 'really' is. "Split at the root," Rich mentions various kinds
of internal splittings towards the end of her essay. She finds that she is involved
in a never-ending process of trying to forge 'connections' among these different
(and often seemingly incompatible] 'selves'.