the dialogic is resolved by the introduction of monologic discourse is - PDF document

the dialogic is resolved by the introduction of monologic discourse issued byan omniscient narrator that controls the narrative in all its levels. In turn, thelanguage of the allegory and fable would be more adequately expressed in anarrative tradition which some critics have regarded as close or even coinci-dent with it, namely, the short story (Shaw, 1983: vii).Although Virginia Woolf is primarily known as a novelist, her vocation assuch is but a late one: her first novel, The Voyage Out(1915), was publishedwhen she was well over thirty, yet recognition and prestige would only arrivein the 1930s, after the publication of some of her most well-known works suchMrs. DallowayTo the LighthouseOrlandoWaves(1931). WoolfÕs first publications appeared as early as 1904, and theywere basically reviews and essays where she already showed a critical eye anda growingly strong opposition to realism and its major form of expression,namely the bourgeois novel that Woolf mainly associated with male modes ofwriting. The present paper aims to vindicate the aspect in which VirginiaWoolf was more overtly ÔmetafictionalÕ: the practice of writing some of hershort fiction. This was, according to her, a new genre freed from the realist con-ventions that had modelled the novel from its inception as a literary form. Suchan attitude is openly at work in ÇAn Unwritten NovelÈ (1920), a short piecewhich parodies realism by laying bare the functioning of its conventions whileopening the way to new fictional modes of understanding literature.In 1905 Woolf published a review of W.L. CourtneyÕs in fiction(1904), who implied that the novel as a genre was bound to disap-pear due to the ÇinsidiousÈ influence of women entering the literary spherewhich had been formerly and primarily dominated by men. Woolf agreeswith CourtneyÕs assertion that Çthe novel as a work of art is disappearingÈ, butfor reasons which differ from CourtneyÕs own. According to Woolf, the real-ist novel had, at the turn of the twentieth century, exhausted its possibilitiesas a genre, and it became necessary to ÇinventÈ a new genre where Çwomenhaving found their voices have something to say which is naturally of supremeinterest and meaning to womenÈ (1986: 16). Some years later, Woolf explainedto David Garnett the satisfactory experience of having published her firstshort story Ð ÇThe Mark on the WallÈ (1917) Ð and how the genre had ful-filled, to some extent, her aesthetic expectations: ÇNovels are frightfully clum-sy É I daresay one ought to invent a completely new form.È (1994a: 167)Indeed, and as Dominic Head (1992: 1) has suggested, the rise of the mod-ern short story chronologically coincides with the emergence of the aestheticmovement which came to be known as Modernism. Many writers who wereto be later primarily known as novelists opened their path to experimentationand literary innovation by means of their short fiction, thus reacting againstthe historicism and positivism that had permeated the Victorian novel andwhich eventually reflect profound dissatisfaction with traditional values. Links &Letters 8, 2001Laura Mar’a Lojo Rodr’guez 1.For a development of this point, see Luk‡cs (1971), Ferguson (1989), Baldwin (1993) andHarris (1994). Words Fail MeÐ later to become the essay ÇCraftsmanshipÈ Ð Woolf discussedÇthe craft of words Ð the craftsmanship of the writerÈ and immediately drewattention to the original meaning of the word craft, Çcajolery, cunning, deceitÈ(1993: 137).Aesthetic and communicative needs do not coexist in language, and thatis precisely the writerÕs greatest dilemma: ÇHow can we combine the oldwords in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so thatthey can tell the truth? That is the questionÈ (1993: 141).because language is never individual, but communal experience; language hasbeen worn out by centuries of use and myriads of speakers; Çwhenever we seea new sight or feel a new sensation we cannot use [words] because languageis old.È (1993: 141) Words, according to Woolf, inevitably carry along asso-ciated thoughts, feelings, sensations and scenes:This power of suggestion is the one of the most mysterious properties ofwords. Everyone who has ever written a sentence must be conscious or half-conscious of it. Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of asso-ciations Ð naturally. They have been out and about, on peopleÕs lips, in theirhouses, in the streets, in the fields for so many centuries. And that is one ofthe chief difficulties in writing them today Ð that they are so stored withmeanings, with memories, that they have contracted so many famous mar-riages. (1993: 140-141)This explains, as Linda Hutcheon has put it (1980: 90), the emergenceof a world created through the fictive referents of language, what is referredto as ÇheterocosmosÈ and is intrinsic to any narrative process. Yet in metafic-tion this fact or process is made explicit, and the reader Çlives in a world whichhe is forced to acknowledge as fictionalÈ (Hutcheon, 1980: 7); readers nec-essarily become Çspecialists, word mongers, phrase findersÈ, as Woolf herselfSuch a kind of narrative inevitably draws attention to itself and to its processof construction, which is openly made visible and self-reflecting and which, forthat reason, Hutcheon has defined as Çnarcissistic narrativeÈ (1980: 6). As aresult, concepts such as fictionality, narrative structures or language stopbeing instruments to become the contentÕs core. Those mechanisms whichintervene in the construction of fiction and which realism so ostensibly triedto cover are now laid bare; the aim is to construct a fictional illusion and tomake a statement about the creation of that fiction. In other words, metafic-tional narrative explores a theory of fiction through the practice of writingfiction (Waugh, 1980: 2). Art and life mingle and interact; they interweavein patterns that focus on linguistic and narrative structures, on the reader, onthe nature and intricacies of the text itself. The imaginative process of sto- Links &Letters 8, 2001Laura Mar’a Lojo Rodr’guez 2.For an extensive overview of the issue, see Caughie (1991), Moore (1984), MŽndez On the other hand, ÇAn Unwritten NovelÈ draws on the language offable and metaphor which, as earlier stated, supplants the conventions of real-ism. There is a long connection in Virginia WoolfÕs writing between fic-tion-making and train-journeying, which invariably becomes an image of it.In her essays it was developed in ÇByron and Mr. BriggsÈ (1922), ÇCharac-Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brownchronological progression indicates, reached a peak in WoolfÕs concern for thecreation of character in fiction that she had begun in ÇAn Unwritten Nov-el.È In the first of these essays, Woolf suggests that the process of creating acharacter is a somehow familiar, ordinary game that we all play: ÇThere issomeone in the corner of the railway carriage, let us suppose, who has occu-pied himself reading the newspaper, looking out of the window, and guess-ing from the scraps of talk at the lives of his fellow passengersÈ (1988: 489).However, what makes the writer different from any individual familiar withthis game is his or her anxiety to give order to the severed parts, scraps of per-sonality in order to create a work of art:The writer (for we are trying now to imagine the process in the writerÕsmind) receives a shock; he sees that this is complete and somehow significant;and this completeness and significance can be most properly expressed inwords. For the rest of the journey he does not listen to the talk. First he mustget the impression more and more; then he must consider how to express inwords exactly what there is in his mind. (1988: 489)In Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brownin fictionÈ and published as a pamphlet by the Hogarth Press Ð Woolf rais-es three basic questions which, for her, lay at the core of fiction and whichare a response to Arnold BennettÕs argument of her having failed to createJacobÕs Room(1922): Çto make out what wemean when we talk about ÔcharacterÕ in fictionÈ, to say something Çabout thequestion of realityÈ and to suggest Çsome reasons why the younger novelistsfail to create characters, if, as Mr Bennett asserts, it is true that fail they doÈAs for the first issue raised, Woolf poses her famous assertion that Çon orIn spite ofthe irony implicit in such a phrase, it is obvious that Woolf makes clear thatthe conception of character in fiction has changed dramatically from, say,Arnold BennettÕs view Ð which she considers as the epitome of that kind of Links &Letters 8, 2001Laura Mar’a Lojo Rodr’guez 4.For further analysis of this image see Bowlby (1997) and Lewis (1975).5.December 1910 is the date of the first Post-Impressionist Exhibition, organised, amongothers, by Roger Fry, Clive and Vanessa Bell and Leonard Woolf. The Grafton Galleriesshowed the first examples in England of non-representational art, introducing the workof painters such as CŽzanne, Mattisse, Van Gogh or Picasso. For an analysis of the dra-matic changes which took place in Britain in the 1910s, see Stansky (1996) and Butler the passage below are WoolfÕs, which is a further sign of intentional autho-rial intervention):Slowly the knives and forks sink from the upright. Down they get (Bob andBarbara), hold out hands stiffly; back again to their chairs, staring betweenthe resumed mouthfuls. [But this weÕll skip; ornaments, curtains, trefoil chi-na plate, yellow oblongs of cheese, white squares of biscuit Ð skip Ð oh, butwait É]. (1985: 114)In the narratorÕs ÇdecipheringÈ of the ladyÕs personality s/he interprets herrubbing the window pane of the train carriage as Ça stain of sin. Oh, sheexciting though not equally satisfactory to endow Minnie with: ÇA parting,was it, twenty years ago? Vows broken? Not MinnieÕs É She was faithfulÈor a Çsuppressed secret Ð her sex, theyÕd say Ð the scientific people. Butwhat flummery to saddle with sex! No Ð more like this.È (1985: 115)Details, for the narrator, are not important, but out of the Çmany crimeswhich arenÕt yourcrimeÈ, MinnieÕs should be ÇcheapÈ enough to match herown vulgar appearance: having scalded a baby brother with a hot kettle isenough for a Çsolemn retribution É All her sins fall, fall, for ever fall.ÈRevealingly, all the characters, personalities and situations which sur-round the construction of the narratorÕs character and of his or her Çunwrit-ten novelÈ are commonplace topics, recurrent situations, sensationalist scenesand worn out characters that may have well sprung Ð as some of them actu-ally do Ð from one of Arnold BennettÕs novels, for Woolf an example of cheapentertainment literature: the abusing sister-in-law Hilda, the passive broth-er John, the surrogate children Bob and Barbara, the commercial travellerMoggridge, even the picture of MinnieÕs indifferent God, as the narratorimagines her praying in her attic over the roofs of Eastbourne.Parody is itself, as Linda Hutcheon has suggested (1980: 25) one of theessential qualities of metafictional narrative which implies an exploration ofdifference and similarity. ÇAn Unwritten NovelÈ overtly plays with na•verealist conventions Ð all those elements which intervene in the constructionof MinnieÕs character and her story Ð by means of the ironic use of certain lit-erary codes that no doubt the reader will recognise. Yet the story goes beyondmere ridicule, mockery and destruction: ÇAn Unwritten NovelÈ is an exam-ple of how metafiction parodies and imitates as a way to a new form. It is notwhat the story tells that is important, but the way in which it is told, whishbecomes the core of this kind of narrative as the narrator implies with his orher comments on her role, such as: ÇHave I read you right? É Hang still,then, quiver, life, soul, spirit, whatever you are of Minnie Marsh Ð I, too, onmy flower Ð the hawk over the down Ð alone, or what were the worth of life?Alone, unseen; seeing all so still down there, all so lovely. None seeing, none Links &Letters 8, 2001Laura Mar’a Lojo Rodr’guez Early Modernism: Literature, music and painting inEurope 1900-1916. Oxford: OUP.AUGHIE, PamelaL.(1991). Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism: Literature in questUrbana & Chicago: Chicago UP., Bernd (1987). ÇVirginia WoolfÕs ÔAn Unwritten NovelÕ: Realistische ErzŠhl-konventionen und Innovative €sthetik.È Anglia: Zeitschrift fŸr Englische Philolo-ERGUSON, Suzanne (1989). ÇThe rise of the short story in the hierarchy of genres.ÈSusan Lohafer; Jo Ellyn Clarey (eds.)Short story theory at a crossroadsBaton Rouge & London: Louisiana State UP., Stephen (1973). ÇÔAn Unwritten NovelÕ and a hidden protagonist.È VirginiaWoolf Quarterly, Gillian; VirginiaSWriting for their lives: The Modernist. London: The WomenÕs Press., Wendell(1984). ÇVision and form: The English novel and the emergenceof the short story.È Charles May (ed.) The new short story theoriesAthens, Ohio: Ohio UP., Dominic(1992). The modernist short story: A study in theory and practicebridge: CUP.UTCHEONNarcissistic narratives: The metafictional paradoxMethuen.AURENCE, Patricia (1991). The reading of silence: Virginia Woolf in the English tra-. Stanford: Stanford UP.EWIS, Thomas (1975). ÇVision in time: Virginia WoolfÕs ÔAn Unwritten NovelÕÈ. Vir-ginia Woolf: A collection of critical essays: 15-22. New York: McGraw-Hill., Georg (1971). The theory of the novel: A historico-philosophical essay on the formsof the great epic literature. (Anna Bostock trans.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P.Short story theories. Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP.Ñ(ed.) (1994). The new short story theories. Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP., Madeleine (1984). The short season between two silences: The mystical and thepolitical in the novels of Virginia Woolf. Boston: Allen & Unwin., Robert (1979). Fabulation and metafiction. Urbana & Chicago: Illinois UP.HAW, Valerie (1983). The short story: A critical introductionTANSKY, Peter (1996). On or about December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and its inti-mate world. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP., Charlotte (1979). ÇÔI need a little languageÕ.È Virginia WoolfQuarterlyAUGH, Patricia (1984). Metafiction: The theory and practice of self-conscious fictionLondon: Methuen., Virginia(1978). The diary of Virginia Woolf II. Anne Olivier Bell (ed.). Har-mondsworth: Penguin.Ñ(1980). The diary of Virginia Woolf III. Anne Olivier Bell (ed.). Harmondsworth:Penguin.Ñ(1985). The complete shorter fiction of Virginia Woolf. Susan Dick (ed.) London:The Hogarth Press.Ñ(1986). The essays of Virginia Woolf I. Andrew McNeillie (ed.). London: The Hog-arth Press. Links &Letters 8, 2001Laura Mar’a Lojo Rodr’guez