The Virginia Woolf Reading Group discussion

I was re-reading those eight sentences at the end of Ulysees--you know, Molly's. I have a love/hate relationship with that part of the book. The part which bothers me would be the blatant egoistic self-centeredness of it, and the part I love would be the blatant egoistic self-centeredness of it.

Anyway, Woolf was critical of Joyce, saying that his writing "never embraces what is outside itself and beyond." Do you think that what she says is true of Joyce's work?

I know from her diaries that Woolf hated the "egotism" of describing and documenting her mental states. She states in her diary, a statement which I love, is "The way to rock oneself back into writing is this...[O:]ne must become externalized; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain."

My other question is, in considering these two writers (and with Mrs. Dalloway or any other work in mind, too) what does it mean to think 'like a woman'? What characterizes a 'womanly' sentence/consciousness? How does Woolf's style differ from Joyce's with regard to this? How does this question become more complex when considering Woolf's mental illness as well?

First of all, it's important to see these writers in the context of history, they were both writing before feminism took hold in their countries. They are, for the most part, battling with some very old constructs of what it is to be a man or woman.

Since Ulysses was published in 1922 and Mrs Dalloway was published just a few years later (and both are "day in the life" novels), I'd like to use Molly, Leopold, and Clarissa Dalloway as counterparts in this discussion.

Joyce liberates Bloom in Nighttown by turning him into a submissive bottom for Bella Cohen's pleasure. He is heralded as the new womanly man. Bloom is seen as sensitive to the feelings of others, he is caring, a concerned father, and not a typical brute (compared w/The Citizen), nor is he a man about town like Blazes Boylan, who is having an affair with Molly (Bloom's wife). There is a parallel between Bloom and Odysseus, his literary ancestor. Odysseus, although strong and valiant, uses words and his clever wit and intelligence to settle many of his battles. It is the same with Bloom, he can talk his way out of many of the ups and downs that befall him throughout the day (with the exception of his confrontation with the Citizen, who chases him out of the pub with fits of violence).

But Molly isn't really allowed this kind of liberation, in terms of a new definition of the female self. She is bound to home, like most women that come out of the Victorian age. She is not allowed a "public" life, nor is she akin to the world of ideas ("Metampsychosis....who's that when he's at home?")

Instead, she rules the roost from the bedroom, and deconstructs contemporary society, offering a myriad of criticisms of it from her throne. On the other hand, she is also an artist, and lives her life by her own rules, in much the same way that Beckett's characters do. Is she the victim of a male dominated society? Is her powerful sexuality (or perhaps, "egoism") the only logical defense mechanism for living in a world where a woman isn't able to travel to Nighttown when she has sexual urges that her partner is unwilling (or unable) to satisfy (or, for that matter, run for public office, or debate Shakespeare at the National Library). Women give birth in Ulysses, work as prostitutes, serve food and drink, mind their children, write letters, and tempt men sexually...a fairly old construct of the feminine self.

And what sexual politics does Clarissa confront? They are well-mannered ones to be sure. They have more to do with the past, when she was younger, a time when it was appropriate to think of romance. Throughout the day, we are never allowed to know whether or not Clarissa has a happy, healthy sexual relationship with her husband. We must either assume she does not, or assume Clarissa (or Woolf) doesn't think it is an appropriate topic to explore in great length. Clarissa and her husband seem fond of each other, they exist happily (it would seem) in their immediate society.

Molly, like Bloom, has her counterpart in Homer's Penelope. It's important to illustrate that the Bloom household is threatened by suitors, just as it was threatened in Ithaca (until Odysseus returns and slays them - an act Bloom isn't able to do). In the end, it is Molly's love for Bloom that eventually keeps the suitors away (and what better reason?...or is this merely another male fantasy?)

In Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa could hardly be seen as a woman who is shackled to the bedroom, a woman whose only tangible power is of a sexual nature. Is Clarissa's "egoism" healthier than Molly's? Perhaps - and yet both women are riddled with self doubt.

But Clarissa is a partner in the *mastery* of her home. She throws parties, buys her own flowers, takes walks, has social intercourse with a variety of people she has known throughout her life. She is a modern woman in many ways, but unlike Molly, she does not have a passion (apart from throwing parties) that gives her a place outside of social congress. Molly is a singer, and is a performer - she will have a concert tour, and travel. Yes, the concert tour is set up by a man who is fucking her (Boylan), but Molly has talent, and she uses that talent in a way that she shares with the world at large. The tricky construct is noting that despite the "healthier" (psycological/social/cultural) image of Clarissa, she is a "kept" woman, she is a member of proper society because of birth and marriage...hardly a *liberated* woman by today's standards.

But it is important to note that they are women from different cultures, despite the fact that both islands (England and Ireland) are neighbors geographically. British society and Irish society (especially the society of the Irish in the West, where Molly (and Nora Barnacle) are very different cultures. Molly and Nora grew up as country girls, and now are women who live in the big city. But they retain many of their manners and customs from outside the urban environment.

Where was I? Oh yeah, egoism...

Both women are conscious of the socio-cultural constructs I have cited above. They fret and trouble over these constructs. Molly mocks the men who seem to be running things. Clarissa is less reluctant to offer such brazen criticisms, but nevertheless, she has her discontents. But they are mostly framed around men and women (in the context of *proper* society). If Molly does acknowledge other women in her world, it is usually from a vantage point of disdain. Is her ego really as strong as it seems? Is the boisterous voice the sound of a lion roaring, or is it more like the calls of a child who has been brutalized by her surroundings?

While both women seem conscious of a variety of social conventions and their issues, it seems easier to read Clarissa as a modern woman, who is active in her society. While on the surface it is easier to read Molly as the construct of a more Victorian construct of the female self, she also strives to be *master* of her own home.

It would seem that your citation of Woolf's "egoism" has something to do with the internal/externalization of feelings or thoughts. You mention she hated the egotism of documenting her mental states. But what's that all about, really? Was she fearful of her internal world? Was she pained by what she found there? How could she possibly have avoided it, and still construct all that amazing prose that examines the feelings and motivations of her characters? Is she really being honest with us?

As far as your question on what characterizes a womanly sentence, or a feminine voice, I really cannot say. There are so many different voices that stem from either gender construct. I don't want to live in a world where there is only one definition for what a man should be like, or how women should act or write.

But we can talk about how the feminine voice emerges in Joyce and Woolf. As men and women, we can only imagine what it is like to reside in the body/mind/spirit of the other gender. I think Joyce saw that as a stylistic construct (or challenge), where Woolf was really trying to get beneath the surface of men and women and unearth behaviors that would illustrate the masculine feminine psychology. It's possible that in that very construct we have the answer to your question. Men are interested in what the surface looks like - women want to dwell beneath the surface, or rather "within".

In Chinese medicine, female (yin) and male (yang) are defined (with regard to organs) as: the yin organs "hold" and the yang organs "move", i.e., the heart would be yang, because it pushes the blood through the body, whereas the kidneys or the stomach, two organs that "hold" their contents are seen as yin.

Can we apply that metaphor to Woolf and Joyce? Does Woolf's prose seek to hold the moment and live within? Does Joyce writing seek to move mountains with its stylistic excess?

Phillip,
As always you have given me a great deal to think about. I would like to consider a number of things, the yin/yang relationship being one of them, their use of the sea/flow/fluid metaphors in their representation of the female (Joyce) and male/female (Woolf) consciousness, which are quite distinct from one another as you know, and few other ideas and questions which will require some hard thinking and more careful reading (of the works and your own words) on my part.

Joyce's exploration of the female psyche was 'mythical' (and not strictly narrative) in scope, that is to say, the answer to my own question of what constitutes a female consciousness follows the same logic as Joyce's definition of the modern mythic hero: Ulysses is King of Ithaca, father to Telemachus, husband to Penelope, lover to Calypso, etc. As you already know, to Joyce, he is all of these men, and this is then further complicated by varying shifts in the constitution of these roles as "situated" (not really situated, even) in a modern world (this is Joyce's very hand at work, his brilliant style). Leopold, who burns kidneys for breakfast, picks his toenails and masturbates in public, is hardly the "Ulysses" of old. But to Joyce, he was a far more "complete" (that is the word Joyce himself used).

'Woman', then, is defined in the same way, I think. She is, in her "sea" of reveries and fantasies, the Blessed Virgin who displays her undies at the shore, the lusty wife who reflects on her domestic life and sexual desires, the masculine whore-madam who rides men and uses their ears for an ashtray.

This said, Joyce was far more "daring" than Woolf. You are right when you say that Woolf was more concerned with "unearthing" a male-female ('androgynous') psychology, and Joyce, with regard to his female characters, concerned with the stylistic construct of a woman's private language. It is interesting to see how the male psyche, as represented by Leopold, demonstrates that tendency to externalize and compartmentalize whereas the female psyche internalizes--it is instinctually plural and simultaneous (but see my comments below). It's really banal for me to say, but the difference in Joyce and Woolf's literary style truly reflects their very attitudes about how art is to represent their "modern realities".

My additional comment to the above: I won't even go so far as to identify men with the externalization of reality and women as representative of an internal, more instinctual, pluralistic reality. I believe that Joyce and Woolf played with these kinds of categorization of human consciousness, albeit in different ways. The pluralism which constitutes the modern mythic hero, the subjective immediacy of an internal stream of consciousness style, for example, illustrates that hybridization.

In stepping in and out of these categories, they hoped to only approximate the female consciousness, to go back to that woman issue--approximate only, since even Joyce acknowledges the "male fist" in the shaping of a woman's "fluid" consciousness (if I am reading him right, I hope, please correct me) when he says in Finnegan's Wake: 'vaulting feminine libido of those interbranching ogham sex upandinsweeps''sternly controlled and easily repursuaded by the uniform matteroffactness of a meandering male fist.'

Well, I was supposed to step away and think about this more but I guess I got caught up in completing a thought or two.

I will need to think about Clarissa more carefully, and perhaps consider Woolf's other works. So much for a Mrs. Dalloway post, since this is horribly unbalanced in its consideration of the ideas currently open to discussion. This will take more time.

PS
I forgot to thank you for reading, Phillip.

I do love Molly Bloom. I love Mrs. Dalloway, too. This question of their attitudes toward the external world has always intrigued me. We have two women, one is ready to break out of the house (to take the "plunge") and buy some flowers for her party, and the other stays in bed, thinks of sex and lovers past and present, and dreams of flowers all for her self within the sea of her own private consciousness. And who can blame this lovely "mountain flower." Oh, but they are both so ALIVE--and that is what I love and care to explore, you see--how they are alive.

The Embrace
Both stories end in an "embrace": Molly holding Leopold to her breast, and Clarissa: "There was an embrace in death." And I have always been intrigued by that, too. Woolf is both right and wrong about Joyce when she comments that his characters do not "embrace what is outside themselves and beyond"--at the end of Ulysses, Molly does both--she embraces beyond herself (that is, Leopold) but within the internal space of her mind and memory. And Clarissa and Septimus do the same, too.

i love molly and clarissa...for different reasons, obviously. i don't ever want to have to chose between them. my love is big enough for both of them.

clarissa occupies many more pages than molly, perhaps that is why she has to roar so loudly....she gets limited air space.

i read the opening from mrs dalloway this afternoon over breakfast. i am going to read a bit more before a respond again. i want to say more about clarissa and her sexual politics, and more about how she "fills" the world she lives in.

g'night...so tired. too tired to respond, but thanks for writing.

It is good not having to choose between them. The whole world should be ruled by women, as Molly says--the Mollys and Mrs. Dalloways, I think: "...I don't care what anybody says itd be better for the world to be governed by the women..."

Yes, tired. Please rest well, Phillip. I would like to know one day how Clarissa fills the world. How anyone fills the world.

i'd love to listen.

i just went back and started reading the opening of mrs dalloway. i was reminded that we learn a good deal about clarissa from others, and i think molly was citing that when she talked about externalization and internalization. she doesn't merely rely on a character's feelings about themself to rule the roost. the opinions of others are equally valued. this is a really useful tool for establishing characters, and it allows the writer to view her characters from a variety of vantage points.

this practice seems to have really taken hold in modernism, and is rarely discovered in novels before 1900. but what about moby dick? if you like joyce, i think melville is the predecessor to joyce and his manifold voices.

but back to woolf and clarissa and sexual politics. how do you read clarissa? there are so many opinions about her - she's a feminist, she's not a feminist, she's powerless, she's totally self-sufficient....how do you read her? i'll show you mine if you show me yours.

Zoe,

I really agree with a lot that you have to say about Clarissa. And your opening paragraph sort of says it all.

When I was younger (and still getting to know her), I think I sided with Peter's assessment of her - that she was stuffy and had neglected her heart for security. I could only see her surroundings, but I failed to see how she interacts with those surroundings.

Now I see her in a very different light. I think Clarissa, like all great existentialists, looks into her heart and her history and makes a choice (to marry Richard Dalloway). A choice that is grounded in where she comes from and where she wants to go. But more important than mere philosophical constructs, she is fully alive and vibrating. She is connected to the things around her, feels them, takes them in, responds honestly in all situations, dislikes falsity in others, but forgives them and is sympathetic towards them. She has an enormous humanity that I greatly admire and is able to see human beings from a healthy critical perspective (because she is able to view them from perspectives outside her own).

Every page that she occupies reveals how awake she is, which is the highest compliment that I could give anyone.

From the vantage point of feminism, she does not, on the surface occupy a classically formed feminist ideal, where a woman is independent (makes her own living). She does not raise her own child, but puts her in the hands of a woman who has, perhaps, a good deal greater religious zeal than Clarissa would prefer, and this causes her some concern. But at the same time, she gives her daughter the freedom to open her eyes and choose for herself.

As the party gets closer, she feels the weight of society pressing down on her, and her own self criticism rises. But not out of vanity, but out of a desire to truly connect with others and offer them a place to connect. This community she offers to her friends and acquaintances is something of value. It would be easy to argue from a socialist perspective that she is merely oiling the wheels of the bourgeoise, an activity that has little or no value. But to offer your friends a place to "be" and allow them to communicate is an important gift. We cannot control what people say to each other, and surely there is a nice variety of conversations that take place at the party (from the banal to the profound), but it is in this inclusiveness that both Clarissa and Woolf succeed. To "give the space" for something to happen. And leave it up to the participants to find their way.

At the party she opens her home and herself to all. Yes, (Septimus') death creeps into the space (appropriately) and threatens to tear a hole in the beautiful fabric she has woven throughout the day, but she confronts her feelings and carries on with the courage we would expect from her. She is criticized (and adored) by Sally and Peter, who seem to marvel at her through their ocassional sneers. It is clearly the aspect of unrequited love (for Peter, and perhaps for Sally too) that flares their disapproval. They want to mold Clarissa into something that pleases them. But Clarissa is her own woman, and not so easily manipulated. She has true inner strength, despite the appearance of her internal self-criticism (which we all suffer). And that is where she succeeds as a human being, which strives beyond gender constructs.

Personally, I can't relate so well to who she is on the surface. I have never been used to comfort or the kind of financial security that she enjoys. But I truly admire her and feel a great kinship with her in terms of her ability to long for connection and in the way that she desires to cultivate that connection with everything around her (flowers, people, the sky, the moment).

I suppose, at some point, I stopped looking for that kind of intense emotional thing you describe, but I didn't give up on intense feelings, rather I look for them and cultivate them in my art. This has allowed me more patience with humans, and I rely less on having someone around to make me feel good. It is a more self-sufficient platform, lonely as it may be from time to time. I'm not saying I don't have friends and people around - I do, and I really couldn't live without my dear friends that have become my family over the years (I was an adopted only child, and both parents have passed....technically, I no longer have a family). Like Clarissa, I produce concerts in the same way that she produces parties - in order to cultivate culture and create community. And that has been an extremely rewarding pursuit.

hey zoe,

thank you for your post, your story about the ukranian woman was delightful, and it triggered a memory for me - when i was a little boy, we lived next door to an elderly couple. my parents would leave me in their care while they went to work, and every afternoon the woman would play the organ and i would lie in front of it and the sound of it would soothe me into a nap. how delicious. thanks for reminding me of that.

and thank you so much for acknowledging the committment and the time and all of the beauty that i have found in my saxophone and on this journey called music. i am so humble before it. it is so great, and i am so small. i don't believe in the word "master" when it comes to music, for none of us are great enough to know all of its mysteries. i just keep doing the work and it keeps filling me up. i feel very young, and yet i have lived 49 years. i have been playing the same saxophone for 32 years (we are very close), and i played other instruments before that, going back to when i was 8 or 9 years old. through practice or gigs, i played 8 or 9 hours a day throughout my 20's and mid 30's. i usually play every day, but sometimes it's good to take a day off, but i never take more than one day off a week.

i am really happy that you have found this piano and have this arrangement. i hope you can find the time to spend with it. i lived in russia for a while and i can just picture olena. i met and played with so many wonderful musicians there. they have a beautiful spirit in their music.

forgive me for not having further pursued our beckett dialgoue. i had to put my cat to sleep yesterday, and i'm taking some time to process that. i also played a concert tonight at the oakland museum (and a rehearsal this afternoon). my weekends are often very full.

thank you so much for your time and your thoughts, i appreciate them and am happy to be discussing these books with you.

Forgive me for re-opening a thread that was discussed so long ago. But I just finished reading Mrs. Dalloway for the second time (and earlier in the year had read Ulysses for the first time).

I love this discussion of Molly vs. Clarissa. But even though you bring Leopold in here, there is no mention of the men in Mrs. Dalloway in this discussion. I think how VW paints men is just as important as how Joyce paints women.

Personally, I love Mrs. Dalloway exponentially more than Molly (and I also love the book more than Ulysses). I found it interesting what you said about external and internal states because it seemed for me that Clarissa was clearly a character that tries to open up, though her efforts to connect are sometimes futile. But Peter Walsh, for instance, is quite selfish and internal. His thoughts revolve almost entirely around his own life and interests. Clarissa even says at one point how Peter is unable to truly think of other's perspectives. And I think this was beautifully written into the novel when Peter's own internal dialogue kicks in. Would this be some kind of reversal of traditional depictions?

she is criticized (and adored) by Sally and Peter, who seem to marvel at her through their ocassional sneers. It is clearly the aspect of unrequited love (for Peter, and perhaps for Sally too) that flares their disapproval. They want to mold Clarissa into something that pleases them. But Clarissa is her own woman, and not so easily manipulated.

Yes. I noticed how proportion and conversion were two things that came up in this novel. About conversion, Clarissa says: "Had she ever tried to convert any one herself? Did she not wish everybody merely to be themselves?" There seems to be a constant struggle here between personalities who want something from others, or want them to change, versus others who are happy with who they are as well as who others are. I think Clarissa and Virginia Woolf share this in common, in that both want to see the variety of different personalities and appreciate them for them. This book is a case for that, I think.

Personally, I can't relate so well to who she is on the surface. I have never been used to comfort or the kind of financial security that she enjoys. But I truly admire her and feel a great kinship with her in terms of her ability to long for connection and in the way that she desires to cultivate that connection with everything around her (flowers, people, the sky, the moment).

There's a certain sadness in this book that is related to this point. That people are who they are partially due to outside factors. I'm thinking of Miss Kilman here, whose looks and social class made her a bitter woman. And Clarissa whose looks and wealth made her who she is. And that these are not choices, but circumstances nonetheless that shape who they are, beyond their control.