The Interrupted Moment: A View of Virginia Woolf's Novels

by Lucio P. Ruotolo

Throughout Virginia Woolf’s life and fiction, interruptions arouse inventive impulses, and such disorienting moments constitute, in the author’s view, a key aspect of Woolf’s experimental intention. To remain open to the shock of unmediated experience, what Woolf calls its “anarchy and newness,” is to recognize and celebrate the random diversity of modern life. Those of her characters who allow the chaotic intrusion of events or people to reshape expectations emerge as her most creative heroines. Those who voice distaste for interruption, and succumb to a protective impulse to close themselves off, invariably fall back into postures of self-supporting insularity.In widening perception, the impact of discontinuity occasions a more communal view of art and society—a shift from “I” to “we.” Woolf’s recurring impulse to break derived sequences of art and politics reveals a growing critique of something more fundamental than either patriarchal hierarchy or what Leonard Woolf described as “bourgeois Victorianism.” In the manner of anarchism, she comes to question those presumptions that underlie the theory of governance itself. Central to all her thinking is the revelation of interruption, heralding change, and the growing expectation that society is on the verge of radical transformation.The author studies each novel in turn, showing how the issues that motivated Woolf as a creative writer gradually developed in complexity—from The Voyage Out and its attempt to cultivate the art of doing nothing to Between the Acts and its vision of an egalitarian society where each new interruption emerges with a promise of renewal.

Genres: Literary Criticism

262 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1986

Reviews

[Robert Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting analysis of Woolf's novels from the perspective of her use of unterruptions to the characters' actions and thoughts. Ruotolo argues that it is in these moments that the actants have the opportunity to reflect upon their own perspective and to potentially see the world anew (at least that is what I took away from the book). Ruotolo concludes that Woolf was promoting the idea of anarchy as a way to a more peaceful, freedom maximising society. I can't say in my reading of her novels that I picked up on this theme but perhaps I will re-read some of them with Ruotolo's analysis in mind.
Ruotolo is clearly very knowledgeable about Woolf's work and her biography, as well as literature in general. His book is highly academic and while I have admired and enjoyed most of Woolf's novels (albeit it has taken me some effort to come to appreciate them), I found a lot of Ruotolo's retelling of her stories through the lens of the 'interrupted moment' highly conjectural and perhaps to some degree a projection of his ideas onto the text, which is not to say that such a projection is an invalid way reading of Woolf's texts.
I have given the book three stars not so much as a criticism of the book, but more as an indication of a mismatch between my reading level and that of Ruotolo's (a professional academic). I do not at this stage feel qualified to give it either a higher or lower rating.