"Reading
Woolf" Seminar -– Possible
Topics
5 pg. paper – due Friday, Feb. 27
A development of one of your commentaries (though, of course, unlike a commentary,
the finished paper has to have a thesis and make an argument)
A study of the diary entries preceding those we read that identifies a range
of key (recurrent) concerns and themes (and perhaps images or metaphors)
A study of various diary entries in the full diaries versus the same entries
in A Writer’s Diary to see how knowing what has been omitted
and having a better sense of the context of the entries affects one’s
understanding or interpretation of them
Comparison of certain aspects of the film, Mrs. Dalloway (with Vanessa
Redgrave as Clarissa), with the original (there are a couple of useful articles
on this subject that you could draw upon and take issue with)
An essay that begins to explore critical responses to the film The Hours,
especially in relation to the portrait of Woolf in that film and the references
to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
A reading of one or more of the more controversial characters or aspects of
Mrs. Dalloway, for example, what are the connections between Septimus
Smith and Clarissa Dalloway; who is Miss Kilman and why does Clarissa love to
hate her; to what extent are we to sympathize with Clarissa and to what extent
are we to be critical of her; how are we to read the scene where Clarissa reacts
to the news of Septimus’s death
An analysis of “Am I a Snob?”, one of the pieces in Moments
of Being that we did not read
A comparison of certain aspects of Woolf’s earlier memoir “Reminiscences”
with her treatment of the same events or materials in “A Sketch of the
Past”
Imitation plus 2-3 page critical commentary:
•A character study/portrait
•An extended dialogue, monologue, or multiple- party conversation
•Passage of extended ‘philosophical’ reflection
•Description of scene or event using extended analogy
Critical commentaries/analyses:
•Reflections on patterns of imagery or ideas (anchored in details, quotes)
discerned in WD, Sketch or other essays, or MD. Reflections could focus on particular
entries, passages, or scenes and 'argue for' their importance, the insights
they give into VW, her work, times, into writing....
•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/characters’ bodies
- the physicality of her descriptions, portraits...Clarissa’s experience
of her body, Septimus’s, Miss Kilman’s….
•Find out more about the individuals VW writes about in WD (or in the
complete Diaries), for example, her father, Leslie Stephen, her brother Thoby,
her sister Vanessa, Roger Fry, Lytton Strachey, Vita Sackville West. How does
what you learn from this research enrich your reading of the relevant references
in Sketch or the other essays and/or relevant entries in the Diaries? What information
do you think may be particularly important for Woolf’s readers to know
in order to understand her work more fully, including, perhaps, some of her
own biases?
•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, they are synesthetic or "color/sound memories.” "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.
------- -->What are your first memories? Are they "color/sound memories,"
like Woolf's? How can you tell (if you can) that they are they are "real"
memories, rather than ‘memories’ that draw upon photos you saw later,
books you read, or things you heard people say or describe….? Does Woolf
seem at all concerned about the ‘accuracy’ or authenticity of her
memories?
•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 scene for they would not survive
entire so many ruinous years unless they were made of something permanent; that
is a proof of their 'reality'.....[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 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? Can
you think of examples in Mrs. Dalloway that illustrate the process she is describing
here? Are her comments relevant to your own writing process? If not, do you
have any insights into what makes you a writer, what you almost always have
to find in order to write what you want to write?
•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.
--------> 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,
or perhaps write about the spatial geography (private/public spaces) in Mrs.
Dalloway.
•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— or 20--? Could you write a 'sketch' using this approach?
•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.
-------> It might be interesting
to recreate such split-self scenes yourself, if you have had such experiences.
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