I have recently been down a long and convoluted Virginia Woolf shaped rabbit hole and what a fascinating journey it has been.
It began with ‘The Memory Library’ by Kate Storey, (visit: beyondtheairing cupboard.co.uk to read my thoughts on that book and a musing about ‘Mrs Dalloway,’) and led me to have another go at the novels of Virginia Woolf. ‘Mrs Dalloway’ seemed as if it might be the most easily accessible, I read it and loved it. I was so surprised and wasn’t going to jinx the situation by picking up ‘To the Lighthouse’; found incomprehensible in student days. Thus I turned to ‘Jacob’s Room’ and ‘A Room of One’s Own’. I then realised that the latter wasn’t a novel at all but a long and heartfelt feminist essay with quite virulent attacks on the ruling patriarchy. Remember these works were written and published in the 1920s, a time of passionate protests about the lack of women’s suffrage and in the years after the First World War when women were trying to find their place in society again as men returned home. All this is based on the premise that men always have their own space, room etc and women virtually always do not. I wonder if that is the same today. It’s interesting how many female writers have written their novels at the kitchen table with children playing on the floor and the dinner cooking close by. Men always seem to have a spare room, a garret or even a shed to which to retreat. Do women have sheds? Maybe writing rooms at the bottom of the garden these post-Covid days.
Anyway, I digress. Searching around this wealth of thinking and writing I came upon ‘The Hours’. I had heard of this as a film and knew it had a Woolfian connection but I didn’t know it as a book. Oh my goodness, what an excellent read it is, written so skilfully by Michael Cunningham. I truly loved it. The author takes apart Virginia Woolf’s story of ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and recreates it in modern day Manhattan. He draws inventively on the life and work of the author to tell his own story of a group of contemporary characters all struggling in their own way with the conflicting claims of love and hope, inheritance and despair. Almost playful references are made to the original ‘Mrs Dalloway’ book with Michael Cunningham opening with exactly the same line: “ Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” and indeed calling the main character by Mrs Dalloway’s name: Clarissa. Also, the title “ The Hours” was the working name of Woolf’s novel.
All the action takes place on one day, following both the original story and the example of Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. Woolf was very influenced by James Joyce whose mammoth, controversial book was published just a couple of years before her own in 1922. Michael Cunningham plays with the passage of time, with Virginia Woolf’s device of writing in a stream of consciousness and with our interconnectedness with each other, even when we don’t want this to be so.
It was a treat to find films of both Mrs Dalloway and The Hours, both with excellent actors. The first starring Vanessa Redgrave, and The Hours with a stellar performance by Meryl Streep.
I then turned to ‘Jacob’s Room’ where Virginia Woolf delves into the life of Jacob Flanders, whom we come to know by a series of vignettes pieced together through the perspectives of those around him. He is a young man who cannot find his place in life. His friends and family find him difficult, elusive and enigmatic. This is rather like a lecture in literary devices as the meaning of life is explored through internal monologues, letters and experimental narrative. Jacob is killed in the First World War and when eventually his rooms are cleared out, his mother and his friend are left perplexed and bemused by the emptiness, conveyed by the few, random possessions. Mrs Flanders is left holding up Jacob’s old shoes, unsure what to do with them, signifying the incompleteness of his life.
Then it occurred to me that I had a Susan Hill book, from about 8 years ago, called ‘Jacob’s Room is full of books.’ This is one of her books about books, that I find very enjoyable to read. At the time I did not realise she was making a very loose literary allusion to Virginia Woolf but now it is very obviously so. Susan Hill goes through a year of her reading, interspersed with memories and thoughts and with how the natural world changes with the months. She is an opinionated writer, which is fine by me. Some sentiments I agree with and some I don’t. As far as I’m concerned that just makes the book stimulating and thought provoking.
So now, just to keep the metaphor going, I have surfaced from the rabbit hole, am sitting on the grass in the sunshine, slightly breathless and wondering if it was all a dream.
I won’t now be venturing ‘To the Lighthouse,’ instead I think maybe it’s time to catch up with the slightly grubby but engaging goings on of Rebus in a couple of Ian Rankin books.