Memories and Time in Between the Acts

Between the Acts is as ingenious in its design as it is in its execution- the concept of a play within a novel offers an oddly fitting portrayal of the way Woolf associates memory with the visual, as theatre is in itself a form of visual representation of literature.  It is even more relevant that the pageant is one about the history of England, again illustrating such ties between imagery and memory.  Time is once again an important element in this work, although it plays a much more subdued yet equally profound as it does in Woolf’s other novels such as To the Lighthouse and The Waves.  Like Mrs. Dalloway, the events in the novel take place during a single day in a small town outside of London, slowing time down enough for Woolf to paint her own picture of a day in modern England.  It is particularly important that all of the character’s are known in only a day’s time, because it suggests that the characters have all reached this specific collective moment in which they are seen, being taken as a singular instance in time while retaining its quality of fleetingness and progression. 

It is as if Woolf is making an argument for the reasons society stands as it does in the present by depicting a play of historical significance, even if the only part of society exposed to the reader is that which is directly associated with Bartholemew Oliver and his life.  This is further conveyed by the final scene of the pageant, during which Miss La Trobe uses mirrors to symbolically illustrate what society has become in the present.  The final effect of this scene is not in any way meant to gratify the audience, nor by extension the modern society that they represent.  Instead it presents a rather pessimistic point of view, but whether Woolf is blaming society for its present state despite England’s past accomplishments or if she is simply offering her explanation is debatable.  Regardless of the reason, it is obvious that throughout the novel Woolf is depicting the negative aspects of society.  Very few marital relationships seem stable- possible a comment on the social expectations of marriage versus the needs of an individual- which is seen in the relationship between Giles and his wife, who instead desires the attention of Mr. Haines.  The principal characters also negatively receive the promiscuity of Mrs. Manresa and the homosexuality of William Dodge, despite clear problems in the other characters’ own sexual relationships.  In yet another notion of irony, the audience assembles itself to watch a play that is a clear representation of social commentary, which is the same function that the novel itself has for the reader.  This divide between the narrative and the visual is once Woolf seeks to close together through her own representation of the visual within the frame of her narrative.  Like Septimus’s death in Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s use of a play at the climax of the novel is another visual culmination of the tensions within the narrative that build up to this final scene.  This is not to say that imagery is forgotten in the earlier parts of the novel- this is certainly not the case- but the convergence of images in the final section are representative of the way Woolf intertwines imagery and narrative together in order to create an effect more profound than each of these elements taken at face value.