I thought I'd share some of the random thoughts of this lit nerd whilst writing a paper on Ian McEwan's
Atonement and Virginia Woolf's
To the Lighthouse (though, they don't really have to do with the paper)...
How was "intertextuality"
not in my Word dictionary?
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Random funny quote from
Atonement (talking circa 2000): "It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet a distinguished intellectual." haha... good advice!
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The original image for the Hebrew word for "help-meet" is of two mirrors opposing one another so that one has a view simultaneously into oneself as well as into the other infinitely. [Picture
Inception =]
In
A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf said, "Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size." As many critics will point out, mirror references are proliferate in women's writing and writing about women. Woolf includes them; they are hugely significant in
Jane Eyre; they are at times playful as in
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There--but they are always significant. A woman looks into the mirror waiting and wishing to discover the meaning of what is reflected back. Ahh! I'm just in shock over that quote right now. She couldn't have known that was the meaning of help-meet (she probably would have resented it if she did). Just goes to show how deeply the Truth of our identity is rooted in our very fibers.
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Just one of the ways in which Virginia Woolf's novels are different than most:
Her characters are lovely, but they don't seem to have a life of their own. I (sadly) don't believe we will ever cease to have spin-offs and sequels of Elizabeth and Darcy. People muse about the characters in
Jane Eyre long after they complete the novel. The whole uproar surrounding
Atonement is "what
really happened to the (completely fictional) characters?" But Woolf's characters have this remarkable quality about them to seem entirely realistic and significant while reading them. They are clearly identifiable. But once the narrative ends, so does the character's existence.
* * *
"The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare." - Virginia Woolf (sad but true)
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." - Matthew 24.35 (amazing!)
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Life connection #1 - Virginia Woolf lost her older half-sister, Stella, 101 years to the day before my brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
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On a sadder note, I always thought Virginia Woolf had chosen to not have children due to her feminist views and in favor of her career as a writer. I was sorely wrong. According to the critic I am reading, "It was the decision of her doctors and Leonard Woolf early in 1913 after three earlier (and, as it turned out, one impending) bouts of insanity that Virginia Woolf should not have children." She later said that she was "always angry with myself for not having forced Leonard to take the risk in spite of the doctors." Furthermore, the critic adds, "In her bouts with anxiety... her thoughts of childlessness and her sense of failure are always interlocked..." This makes me inexplicably sad. I can't help but think that if she'd had children maybe she wouldn't have sunk so deep into depression, maybe she wouldn't have explored lesbianism, maybe she wouldn't have committed suicide. I know its of no use to dwell on "ifs." But reading her works and reading about her breaks my heart and makes me yearn for the possibility of redemption.
