Critical Summary of Woolf's "Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid"

Virginia Woolf writes in “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid” of the newly begun Second World War, which by 1941 had begun to wreak havoc upon England in a series of German air raids.  Woolf writes that the foundation for such a war is freedom, whether it be for or against it in some way, but through her wonderfully lofty writing that zips between war, feminism, and politics as swiftly as the fighter pilots themselves, she touches on a much deeper subject that lies much close to heart.  That subject is the idea of imprisonment, that no matter who somebody is or what society determines them to be- whether it is English or German, man or woman- nobody is truly free, and by nature of society, freedom is limited and is largely a product of the societal machine.  This idea of the machine is a reoccurring theme throughout the essay.  Woolf makes numerous references to pilots who are trapped within a machine, which metaphorically represents the way society places ideas and opinions in one’s head which strongly affect the way they live their life.  Woolf’s call to action is directed at women, who she says are in many ways left out of the war.  The war is fought between men, and the policies are designed by men, which leads her to ask what exactly a woman can do make her voice heard in the midst of a great war.  The answer to this question is ideas, that a woman must let her ideas be known so that society can break away from the machine that has driven it to such extremes.  Rather than blaming men for the atrocities that are happening, she also sees them (in reference to the young men who fight in the military) as victims of the machine as well, despite Woolf’s previous efforts of criminalizing men for they way women are treated in society.  Perhaps it is war that sparks Woolf into taking a new approach to a situation she has long been a part of, but regardless of these circumstances, Woolf takes this opportunity to not only protest the violent actions spreading across Europe, but also the social pressures that caused it.

The Waves and Woolf's Multiple Levels of Conversation

As we finish The Waves, I am becoming more aware of Woolf’s sense of connectivity between the words and the reader.  We already saw Woolf throw out any sense of logic and reason in Orlando, which presents issues such as time and gender as very loosely defined yet thoroughly explored themes.  However the language of Orlando does not take as free of a form as that of The Waves, as within Orlando there are still concepts of the narrator and a relative order of events.  The Waves instead relies completely on its characters’ dialogue, which presents its own constrictions but at the same time frees Woolf to use even more vivid and imaginative language.  Because Woolf is not obligated to provide a narrator’s voice giving directional, spatial, and psychological information, she is able to present all of the plot and imagery through first-person language.  This allows her to simultaneously impose the speaking character’s personality on a scene while providing new visual information, which is then juggled around between the other characters in their conversation. 

Even more intriguing than the form of The Waves are the multiple levels of conversation that happen at once throughout the novel.  The idea of the inner conversation is one that Woolf takes to a new level in this novel.  Between Bernard’s pompous demeanor and Rhoda’s near constant depressive state, there are times when each of the characters feels like a part of one greater mind.  Perhaps each of the characters represents a faction of Woolf’s own ego, as it’s not difficult to see such connections between Bernard’s love of language or Neville’s passion for art.  Yet even such characteristics can be seen on a much deeper level.  Aside from numerous superficial similarities between Woolf and her characters (three of them have ambitions to be writers), other characters explore much deeper emotions.  These emotions tend to reveal themselves in multiple characters, but they are each usually resolved only in one.  For instance, Susan, Rhoda, and Louis all feel like they are excluded from their surroundings in some way:  Susan debates the advantages of living a simple country life away from the city, Rhoda suffers from a sense of complete alienation from the other characters, and Louis is self-conscious of his lower-class appearance and accent.  While ultimately neither Rhoda nor Louis get over their insecurities, Susan makes the conscious choice to live a domestic life on a farm, thus bringing closure to her sense of exclusion while she was in the city.  This pattern is seen again between Bernard, Louis, and Neville to a lesser degree.  All three of the men have ambitions to become writers in the future, but ultimately only Neville is successful in doing so.  This is because Neville is able to dedicate a part of his life to art that the others are not: Bernard is almost lost in his own world to the point that he inhibits his own success.  He is constantly infatuated with language and words, and while he is very talented, he is also heavily invested in the group and his relationships with the other characters.  He does not always make this aspect of his personality obvious, but the way he insists on telling everyone’s story at the end suggests that he is more concerned with the other characters than he may let on.  On the other hand, Louis is similarly invested in his personal relationships that he does not refine his art as Neville did, and instead Louis is constantly questioning his identity.  While each character is unique in their own ways, the similarities between them propel the unconscious conversation between their lives.

Gender Roles Revisited in Orlando

As we continue with the metamorphosis of Orlando, we see Woolf make a profound departure from the boundaries of her earlier work.  In contrast to To the Lighthouse, Orlando ignores the constraints of gender and time and instead they are explored freely and openly throughout the course of the novel.  I like to think of Orlando as being neither male nor female, because both of those designations require an acknowledgement that it is the opposite of the other.  To be male is to necessitates the recognition of the female as the Other, and this contrast better defines what the male is, and vice versa.  While Orlando does identify as male at the start of the plot, his transformation into a women marks his (her) transcendence of human sexuality, and (s)he is therefore able to take on both roles simultaneously. 

It is important to note that Orlando does not separate itself from sex entirely, but rather he/she sees explores both realms equally.  Perhaps this is Woolf’s take on the psychological aspect of gender identity, where one’s gender is not defined by biological means rather than their perception of the self and how society defines gender.  Interestingly enough, Orlando begins as a fortunate young male, and his attitude towards women is surprisingly hedonistic.  During this part of the novel Woolf introduces the male gaze, which is refreshing in a way as this is the first novel we have discussed in class where a male protagonist directly explores his sexual desires (I think of Jacob’s Room as being less from Jacob’s point of view than Orlando is from that of the title character).  Orlando’s social status certainly aids his sexual encounters, although ironically he is at first reprimanded by Queen Elizabeth for kissing a girl in his youth.  This is the only time where we see a woman of higher authority than Orlando, and her unreceptive view of sex foreshadows those that we see again in the Victorian era. 

We experience a gap of about 200 years between Orlando’s time as a young nobleman and the beginning of his life as a woman, during which Orlando is in Constantinople.  After one particular sexual encounter, Orlando is put in a stupor that ultimately yields his transformation into a woman.  With this part of the novel, Woolf again begins to explore sexuality but this time from a woman’s point of view.  In contrast to the relatively overt sexuality of the male version of Orlando, our female Orlando quickly discovers the differences in female sexuality.  She lives in a time of repressed sexuality, which is symbolized by her encounter with the sailor where even the exposure of her ankle is almost enough to kill him.  While noble Orlando was given free reign during his association with King James, Orlando’s social status does little to affect her sexuality as a woman.  Orlando is expected to conform to social standards set for women, and she is confronted with an interesting paradox between men and woman:  Men, who are the pursuers of sex, determine what is socially acceptable and permissible among women, who Woolf portrays as the more sexual of the two genders but must abide by the standards set by men.  It is interesting that we are allowed to see such flexibility through the same character’s eyes, which offers the reader to explore sexuality through a single point of view and become a part of the same transformation that Orlando endures.

Time, Gender, and To the Lighthouse

One of the most provocative themes in To the Lighthouse is the issue of gender roles. Lily and Mrs. Ramsay are the two main female characters, who Woolf often contrasts with their predominately male company. In "The Window", Mr. Ramsay and Charles Tansley are the primary male figures that counterbalance the two women. Mrs. Ramsay acts as the traditional domesticated wife, who lives to serve her husband and children. More important is the fact that she is aware of her role, but she chooses to lead her life in this traditional manner. Lily on the other hand is more outspoken that Mrs. Ramsay, and she refuses to allow her will to be overcome by male expectations. She is defiant when Charles insists that women do not make for good artists, and much like Mrs. Ramsay, she shows a degree of awareness of her own identity as a woman.
In contrast, Mr. Ramsay and Charles do not seem to so aware of their own roles as men. In fact, their whole existence can be seen as the opposite of that of the women. Mr. Ramsay is completely self-centered and dependent on his wife, who knows that he is in need of constant reassurance and support despite his irritability. Mrs. Ramsay even goes so far as to blame herself for his condition, something that Lily despises. Working as his understudy, Charles is exactly that- a Mr. Ramsay in the making, which Lily is keen to prevent. While Lily generally avoids involving herself in Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s marital affairs, Lily has no trouble defending herself in front of Charles. Unlike Mr. Ramsay, Lily knew that Charles had not yet reached the point where he required constant reassurance and flattery; on the contrary, he was ambitious to be challenged.
What is most interesting to me throughout the course of To the Lighthouse is how these gender roles remain constant yet reveal themselves through different characters. In "The Lighthouse," much time has passed since "The Window," and Mrs. Ramsay has passed away. Her role as wife and mother is partially fulfilled by Lily, who assumes the responsibility of being Mr. Ramsay’s primary source of comfort. Perhaps she is compliant to his demands so that she may remain at the house and work on her art in peace, but one gets the sense that she is consciously aware of Mrs. Ramsay’s absence and feels the need to fill the void that she left. Cam balances this notion as she represents the young female point of view, much like Lily did years earlier. Cam is also teased by her father on the boat trip to the lighthouse, and she begins to endure the psychological effect seen earlier in Lily. While it may be assumed that Cam’s relationship with her father and brother long preceded the moments Woolf captures on the page, it is interesting that we see almost the exact situation again, years later in a new generation.
I have by no means exhausted the theme of gender roles in To the Lighthouse, and there are other characters, such as James and Macalister, who need to be explored in order to make more profound conclusions regarding the issue of gender within the novel. However, my scrutiny of this issue has opened my eyes to what I believe is an even greater force in To the Lighthouse, which is time. It is extraordinary how Woolf seamlessly transforms characters over time, and after "The Lighthouse" it is remarkable to go back and look at the first segment of the book and see how each character is reincarnated in the younger generation.

Mrs. Dalloway and the state of equilibrium

One of my favorite things about Mrs. Dalloway is that it doesn’t have the sense of coming together at the end- that is to say, I don’t feel like characters were intentionally placed and constructed so that everyone reaches a happy equilibrium at the end. While each character does eventually find a way to confront their own problems, they do not necessarily find an answer to them. It is almost as if the entire novel is suspended between emotions, because no one character is supposed to represent one idea or emotion; instead all of the characters appear to be at the point in their lives when they are currently unstable and seeking balance.
Clarissa is the most prominent and developed of all the characters, as she is the cornerstone for most of the other relationships we see. Hers is a life that has lost its edge some time ago, and now Clarissa spends her time thinking about countless what-if scenarios and reminiscing in her younger days. Her relationship with Richard is becoming tired, and she even ponders the gap that has formed between them at one point, but overall Clarissa is not one who is tethered by her relationship. Instead she leads a very solitary, introverted life. Most of the main characters who are invited to the party are people Clarissa hasn’t seen in years, or may not know very well, and it gives us a setting that allows Clarissa to explore these what-ifs as she compares her current and former relationships with the other characters.
Septimus is particularly important because throughout the novel he fears he is losing his soul, being psychologically scarred by war. His meeting with Sir William Bradshaw confirms this in his eyes, as Sir William wishes that he be sent away to live in a psychological ward. Fearing the permanent loss of his sanity, Septimus decides to end his own life instead of succumb to such conditions. This is especially important to Clarissa because it seems to put into perspective the magnitude of her own problems.
Peter is another good example of a character seeking balance. He has returned from India, and while he and Clarissa have led separate lives for some time, it is clear that Peter has not achieved everything he once desired in life. Being in the presence of Clarissa seems to make him happy, but he must remain content in knowing that what could have been will never be- something that Clarissa herself may need reminding.
This unbalanced state of emotion is a great tool that allows Woolf to explore the various aspects of the emotional spectrum without being obligated to deliver any (or at least the majority) of characters to a balanced state. Like much of her work, Mrs. Dalloway is not about the beginning or the end, but about the middle, or any passing moment, in which one would experience these types of thoughts and feelings. This is augmented by the fact that the entire plot takes place within and entire day. While it may be easy to provide background information on any number of characters, what this does, and what Woolf wants to avoid, is build an expectation with the reader that any given character will meet a specific end based on pre-established information. Woolf prefers to enlighten through one fleeting moment, and see how much of reality she can fit into it.

Jacob's Room and the Role of Women

Being only her third novel, I think it’s safe to say that Jacob’s Room shows significant insight into the future career of Virginia Woolf. Like all things with Woolf, the alterations and changes in her writing are not intended to jump out from the page, but it is more accessible with a closer look at Jacob’s Room. Marina Mackay writes in her essay The Lunacy of Men, the Idiocy of Women: Woolf, West, and War about Woolf’s modernist approach to both the first world war and the augmented role of women that followed, and I couldn’t help but see the connections between this particular approach and the fact that almost all of the characters through which we get to know Jacob are women. Perhaps Mackay’s theory about women becoming a greater cultural force in 1920s England has any relation to Woolf’s work on Jacob’s Room simply materializes in retrospect with that idea in mind. After all Rebecca West, with whom Mackay compares Woolf, did not create her own post-war works until after the second world war nearly two decades later, but even if this is the case, to me it simply shows that Woolf’s emphasis on the feminine point of view arrives more from her own life and experiences after World War One.
Within the literary structure of the work Jacob is undeniably the protagonist. However, this does not necessarily mean that we see the world through his eyes. Just like in Kew Gardens and The Mark on the Wall , Jacob is the pivot point where all of these points of view stem from. We do get to see what Jacob is thinking at time, especially when he is alone and Woolf is describing a setting that seems to live halfway between reality and Jacob’s imagination, but all of the key external characters are women. It is this aspect that Mackay would argue makes Jacob’s Room a woman’s reflection of the first World War, and as she boldly compares the works of both Woolf and West, she notes that both feature male characters who are destroyed in the violence that came with the war, and that the female characters symbolically represent the woman’s larger role in society after these events. How women have such a powerful influence within the novel, however, is because the majority of the conversation and development we see in Jacob we hear through them first. Mrs. Flanders is easily the most important woman in the book, especially during Jacob’s childhood. At the beginning she plays her own pivotal role, which includes tying together Jacob and Captain Barefoot, the two main male characters at this time. As the plot progresses, other women take up Betty’s role as she is physically left behind, namely Clara, Sandra, and Florinda, to which Jacob has various degrees of sexual and romantic attractions. This change in the female point of view better reflects Jacob’s growth from a boy into a man, yet by showing his life through the eyes of women, Woolf is strongly associating war with men leaving and never coming back, instead of allowing the reader a look into Jacob’s life while he is away. Perhaps all of this seems almost too obvious given the title of Jacob’s Room, a clear reference to absence, but as she does in most of her writing, Woolf weaves all of these ideas into the unconscious of the reader.

Kew Gardens

What I noticed most about "Kew Gardens" was Woolf's eagerness to experiment with a vignette form of writing. By this I mean that the story is tied together by the snail, which has the role of connecting the themes and style of the external action to create more of an ambiance or sensation than an actual contiguous plot. Woolf visually expresses this intention at the beginning of the story when she is describing the bouncing light of the scenery. This light is not simply representative of the detached nature of the vignettes, but it also shows how the story flows. That is to say, visually speaking, these lights combine to create a picture that is more intricate and complex than simply their presence alone. For example, Woolf shows red, blue, and yellow lights passing of the petals of the flower bed as she sets the scene. What is important to realize is that these lights are not independent of each other, because their collective presence with the flowers creates an entirely new image as a whole. Basically this comes down to the "greater than the sum of its parts" theory.
While the external plot development in "Kew Gardens" can feel oddly placed at times, each vignette is in fact a carefully designed piece of the picture. The initial conversation between Simon and Elanor gives me the sense that it is an imitation of the plot as a whole. At first Simon is thinking about an old girlfriend, Lily, who once came to the garden with him. The dragonfly is an interesting part of this conversation. Woolf allows us the image of a dragonfly circling a young couple on their first date, but before we come to the conclusion of this scenario, Elanor abruptly starts speaking of her experience with the kiss as a child. It is as if this visual representation of the dragonfly has jumped to Elanor's find, where instead of simply circling the scene, it makes an attack in the form of a kiss. This kiss is what we were waiting for in Simon's story, but instead it is realized in Elanor's.
With this Woolf implements the idea of things jumping around between the various vignettes. While the snail's three encounters in "Kew Gardens" appear unrelated enough, what is common between the three is how we see them. We are constantly bombarded with imagery that suggests the movement of ideas and bouncing back and forth. This is exemplified in its most extreme form with the two women at the end, whose conversation consists of the spewing of random words that may be taken as the high points of energy in the conversation. What Woolf has done here is not create a tangible plot that allows the reader to reflect, but she creates a sort of visual experience with words, that allows the reader to transcend the physical boundaries of the characters and become a part of the surroundings, much in the way the snail acts.