The scene first takes place between Mrs. Ramsay and her husband Mr. Ramsay. Their son James comes in next, and near the end they refer to a house guest named Charles Tansley:
(excerpt)
Not for the world would she (Mrs. Ramsay) have spoken to him (Mr. Ramsay), realising, from the familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering together of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed privacy into which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged and anguished. She stroked Jame's head; she transferred to him what she felt for her husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow the white dress shirt of a gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, thought what a delight it would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle Jame's bare calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched "that poor young man," Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in and write his dissertation, he said.
"James will have to write his dissertation one of these days," he added ironically, flicking his sprig.
Hating his father, James brushed away the tickling spray with which in a manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and humour, he teased his youngest son's bare leg.
She was trying to get these tiresome stockings finished to send to Sorley's little boy tomorrow, said Mrs. Ramsay.
There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ransay snapped out irascibly.
___
What do you think? Does Woolf's use of quotes in this passage make it stronger?
Maybe she just didn't have a good editor.
ReplyDeleteHa ha! Well, I think her husband was her editor, so you better be careful who you say that to.
ReplyDeleteWoolf has omitted quotation marks where the narrator is reporting speech, e.g. They were going to be late, he said. Where the character is directly speaking, she uses quotation marks: "We are going to be late," he said.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those instances where a modern editor would almost certainly correct the author, and possibly be wrong. On the one hand it's good to have consistency in a book and make it easier for the reader to read the passage without having to go back and work out what's going on. On the other hand, varying the POV like this is interesting and shocks the reader out of her complacency about the scene.
So what's "good" editing? Sometimes a writer can and should be allowed to break the rules. The more old books you read, the more you'll find examples like this.
Jane,
ReplyDeleteSo, are you saying it's for variety's sake? "shocks the reader out of her complacency" I tend to draw the same conclusion, and then I guess I wonder how Woolf decided where to do this, and I also wonder if variety for variety's sake is legit. Does it just become decorative at some point?
Domey, it's a long time since I studied To The Lighthouse (I loved it!) but from what I remember VW was playing a lot with perceptions - how things happend from the different perceptions of her characters.
ReplyDeleteSo I would suggest that the two lines of dialogue WITHOUT quotation marks (...said Mrs Ramsey and ... said Mr Ramsey) were their son James' PERCEPTION of them speaking (i.e. it was his internal perception of them speaking dialogue, rather than the outer action of them actually speaking). does that make sense?
Judy
Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comment, by the way.
ReplyDeleteJudy, that also makes sense. I do feel like this is a possibility, and I try to read the book that way. Sometimes I feel like it is correct. Other times I feel like, even if it is a matter of perception, there is some randomness built into it--which I guess is also true to Woolf's intentions. I try to pay attention to myself in conversation, if I alternate between distancing myself from dialog versus hearing it more closely. Perhaps that's what she was trying to do.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the randomness of it is because she really was one of the early pioneers of "stream-of-consciousness" writing. To later authors, and to us, we may be more structured in how we use or read this method, because we have decades of the stream-of-consciousness genre conventions to fall back on. But VW was inventing something entirely new/original, and I would imagine that her randomness was perhaps merely part of the creative process of a genius in action?
ReplyDeleteJudy
Was Woolf still writing in an era when people read books aloud? A lot of 19c literature has this same use of quotes going on. Woolf may have been using this old technique. When a book is read aloud, it makes more sense to "tell" in narration what people were saying to each other, as if you were reporting a conversation verbally to a friend. Quotes are thrown in where the phrase IS a direct quote by the person (as Jane explained).
ReplyDeleteI can imagine that while reading aloud, the reader might jump into doing a character voice for the text in quotes and otherwise speak naturally. It would be exhausting and unnatural to recount in speech, word for word, a verbatim quote that's a paragraph long.
I think that in Woolf's case, it's either a reference to the days of reading-aloud or a continuance of it.
It does look weird, though, to those of us used to reading books that are intended to be read easily silently, to oneself, and not as much to be listened to.
"That poor young man" in quotes makes sense to me for a number of reasons. For one, I can hear the woman's tone of voice saying that phrase. Also, it makes sense to emphasize that that bit of editorial about Charles Tansley belongs solely to the voice of Mrs. Ramsay and not the narrator.
ReplyDeleteJudy, I'm willing to buy your last point! She was being truly original. She is one of the greats to me, right up there with Tolstoy and well above other classic writers.
ReplyDeleteJeannie, I don't know if that was her intention of not. That's interesting though. I guess I don't know enough about her life to know how she shared her work. I agree with you about your second post, that line in quotes does make a lot of sense to me. It captures the personality.
Jane is right, but I don't think Woolf was doing it for variety's sake. I think she was controlling the narrative distance and emphasizing the moment where the father comments about the son. Why? Virginia must've felt this moment was important enough to draw our attention to it directly, to slow down time a bit and focus.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it was in lieu of italics? Times have changed.
ReplyDeleteUh, er, have I missed something Domey? I've been vacationing, white water rafting, and I noticed a slight name change with you. Maybe I hit my head?? :)
ReplyDeleteI agree with Judy. (I always agree with her, she's SO in the KNOW.) :)But I do think it was their son's slant of them speaking. Not them actually talking. I do know after reading it, I feel odd. Was it the way she told the story? I love reading it, don't get me wrong. This is probably just me. Maybe I'm odd? hehe
It has been a long, long time since I have read To The Lighthouse. So does that make me old? YIKES!
So Domey, "What's up with the name thang?" ^_^
Scott, I really like that idea of varying the distance. I wish I used that technique more in my writing. I feel like I'd be able to, but then I wouldn't be able to decide which parts should be close versus which parts should be distant.
ReplyDeleteT. Anne, I don't think it's the italics. But maybe I'm wrong. If they were more of her thoughts, perhaps.
Robyn, You're not odd or old. :) Thanks for your thoughts. A few people have mentioned that it's the son's point of view. I don't see that myself, but maybe that's the case.
ReplyDeleteAs for the name, I've just decided I need to start using a pen name as I will be looking for jobs in science soon. I'm splitting my identities!
Scott, I liked your take on VW's technique. These were definitely technical decisions taken for very specific artistic reasons, and the fact that we're arguing about what those reasons were shows how interesting her writing is.
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew more about the editing of Woolf's works. Did she work with Leonard because he was the only one who understood her? Did she have trouble with editors who didn't grasp what she was doing?
One of the bees in my bonnet is the cookie-cutter nature of so much contemporary writing, imposed by rules like "you must be consistent with your POV" and "avoid backstory dumps". Sometimes deviating from the rules works. Sometimes it doesn't. But we need publishers who are not afraid to take that risk.
Jane: "you must be consistent with your POV" is total rubbish, mostly because nobody really does it. If you listen to a good oral storyteller, POV and tense shift all the time. I'm reading Nadine Gordimer now, and things are in constant flux but it's easy to follow. I have a WIP wherein POV goes from an emotionally distant 3rd-person omniscient to a very close 1st-person, and I chose all of those POV shifts deliberately with specific intentions in mind.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that VW was probably difficult to edit because she probably didn't enjoy being edited. I hear that Cormac McCarthy hates the editorial process, and with his prose I can imagine why. He's likely always saying, "No, you just don't get what I'm doing here" to his editor.
It appears that she's playing with reportage here. She's telling the dialogue in the non-quotation marked instances, and showing the dialogue with quotation marks. For example, Mr. Ramsay, in telling about Tansley having to write his dissertation, would have said, "Tansley had to go in and write his dissertation." By removing the quotes and adding the extra "had," Woolf turns it into a (very close) paraphrase of what Ramsey said.
ReplyDeleteSame thing with Mrs. R's dialogue. She would say, "I'm trying to (etc.)," not "She was trying to (etc.)."
Not sure why the direct quotation was made, but there's likely a meaning. Perhaps it's that Ramsey's immediate interaction with his children is suffused with selfishness, and this shows that. He can't let his son be a boy and color, but must, in his mind, create future successes for himself through his progeny. It's a loaded interaction, and illuminates character, whereas the rest of the dialogue (without quotes) is less illuminating.
Hm. That was serious. How odd. I should say something silly to offset that, but I don't think I can be bothered....
Cheers!
Since all too often when I'm not running doing the character of Hamlet the man, I'm afraid it seems like I disagree with the Just-Shy-of-Brilliant Mr. Bailey, I will publicly throw my lot in with him on this one.
ReplyDeleteIt's a technique that I've used some myself to control and regulate intimacy and distance, as well as pacing.
That said, I usually hate it when I do it, find it jarring when other people do it, and explicitly remember finding it frustrating in Woolf.
Ah, splitting identities. Now I get it. I'm glad to know I didn't hit my head. :) Love the name, btw. It's so YOU. :)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, this style of writing dialogue is old and used to be commonplace. George Eliot, Jane Austen, and the Bronte sisters, to name a few, used it all the time. It was the norm, not an unusual artistic choice. I don't know enough about Virginia Woolf's contemporaries to know if it was really strange of her to use it in her time. But I doubt that she wasn't familiar with this practice of mixing direct quotes in short phrases within expostulated conversations. In my opinion, it works very smoothly with her stream-of-consciousness style of writing.
ReplyDeleteI should say that I'm inclined to defend Woolf's usage, since I pink fuzzy heart her writing and find her prose delightful. I understand that it's dense and difficult at times, but when she chooses to set aside the circumlocutions and the swirling POV usage, her sentences can hit like sledgehammers.
ReplyDeleteOne thing's for sure, she wielded punctuation like a professional.
Yes, I am sure she did it deliberately, but it's a question of why she would choose a sort of old-fashioned dialogue style, rather than a question of why she came up with the style. She would have been familiar with it, is all I'm saying. It's not as though she invented it.
ReplyDeleteI only point this out because often, we make guesses about what an artist meant to do without taking into consideration their direct influences. An element of writing that means something to us might have meant something a little different to the author based on her context and education.
We can't know for sure what she was thinking, of course, but I sense an intense deliberateness in Woolf's writing. It might be hard to understand or follow, but that in itself seems deliberate with her interest in the fragmented nature of life. Woolf can be a tough author to read, but I don't sense that she was sloppy.
The more I read this passage and others like it, the more I feel she chose that way of presenting dialogue because it flowed perfectly with her stream of consciousness and her fascination with the fragmented.
Mary campbell took my first thought!
ReplyDeleteNo clue though, but I enjoyed he discussion. Like sitting in literature class.
Side note: I read your profiles a few days ago and wondered if someone misspelled your name. The I read your explanation post and went "Oh, ok."
Hope the plan works out Domey :) And congrats on nearing the end of your Doctorate. What a huge life committment that has been.
.......dhole
FP, nice to see you around! Your comment reminded me of a man who was in one of the writing groups I used to participate in. He was writing a memoir about his life and how he was supposed to be this major charmer of women, but most of the other writers in the group found his behavior to be anything but charming. He wasn't able to hide the uncharming part of himself, and he wasn't even able to see it.
ReplyDeleteSimon, I'm still waiting for the joke. Maybe something about drinking? Seriously, great comment. As I read I get all of the information about the characters, and maybe I wouldn't have if Woolf had chosen to write this in any other way.
Nevets, I'd be curious to read your rendition of this technique! And Scott likes it when people disagree with him. It gives him a chance to use words like rubbish.
FP, That's an interesting point about clarity. Woolf is hard to understand for me in two ways. First, she does rapidly switch from one character's inner thoughts to another. It really slows me down, but I do find that about 90% of the time I'm able to figure it out. The second way she's unclear is that I think she chooses very interesting words to convey emotions and sensibility. I can see this not connecting with everyone. I personally feel like I connect with her words, but I think that is an individual case. Updike is the same way for me. His descriptions connect with me on a really deep level, but I think that is due to our similar sensibility. I love Woolf. At the same time, I can easily see why some readers wouldn't connect with her.
Jeannie, I also think Woolf was very deliberate, even though I don't understand every decision she makes. I wish I was better at taking into the writer's time and place, but I hated history as a youngster and sadly I missed out on a lot of really important stuff.
ReplyDeleteDonna, thanks for understanding the name change. The doctorate was actually finished a few years ago, and I've been floating in limbo ever since. I'm trying to get out of limbo!
FP, I actually see similarities in writing between your work and Woolf. LOL, that may be a compliment or an insult to you!
So Dr. D: Can *we* still call you Davin, or should we get into the habit of using your nom de plume? :)
ReplyDeleteGenie: I call him "Big D." He really wants us to call him "Big Daddy" but I can only go so far towards accommodating him.
ReplyDeleteJeannie,
ReplyDeleteYou and everyone can call me whatever you like. I'm just going to be publishing under Domey from now on. Plenty of people still call me Davin, and I'd be sad if they didn't.
I would argue with Scott if he wasn't telling the truth.
ReplyDeleteIs M Diddy acceptable?
ReplyDeleteIs there a real discussion in here somewhere????
ReplyDeleteDavin, you are still Davin in my head. One day, maybe if I see Domey Malasarn on a published novel on my shelf, I might start to think of you as Domey. :)
I'll go with Pee Domey.
ReplyDeleteNevets, Why do you know so much Thai?
ReplyDeleteOr were you talking about the other kind of pee?
Michelle, my goal is to have you be completely confused as to what you should call me. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm confused.
ReplyDeleteAs long as I know you're talking to me I will probably answer. Unless I'm on stage. Then I'll still probably answer. Unless I'm in a big zebra costume. Then I'll probably just make a clicking noise and wink.
ReplyDeleteBecause I'm cool like that, Pee Domey. ;)
ReplyDeletelol
I had some basic conversational Thai several years ago because I love Thai culture and started re-crashing myself a few months ago. It's been slow over the summer, but I'm having fun.
Just don't get in a big chicken suit. After I wrote that story last year, I can't see people in big chicken suits anymore. Zebra suits thought are still good.
ReplyDeleteThat's way cool, Nevets! You need to come over. I'll cook for you. Then we can speak Thai to each other. Then we can kickbox. Then we can make fun of the farangs.
ReplyDelete"It's always good to tease the farangs," my mom used to say.
ReplyDeleteMy muay thai is weak but I've got got some quick aikido strike defense. If you get me in a clinch, I'm done for.
What was this post about again? I asked.
Why would you make fun of guava? Is it a particularly amusing fruit?
ReplyDeleteOh, Scott. You're making this much too easy for us in the know! I don't really know how to kick box, though. That was a lie. But I make a mean curry.
ReplyDeleteBig D., I of course know that "farang" has more than one meaning.
ReplyDeleteMighty Reader and I are growing our own curry in the garden. We have not cooked with it yet, but it smells fine.
I refuse to believe that you don't kickbox. That's an essential part of my image of you.
ReplyDeleteIf it helps, I am an ex-gymnast and studied Japanese martial arts for a few years. Ninjutsu. I don't think I'm supposed to announce that, though. I also like sushi and Banana Yoshimoto...who you really must read if you haven't. Have you?
ReplyDeleteI've read "Kitchen." She's weird in a really cool way. I studied boxing in high school. Which means that I was punched in the head a lot as a boy. That likely explains a great deal. I took a semester of fencing in college.
ReplyDeleteBummer no kickboxing, because I think your ninjitsu could beat my aikido if you were ever flexible enough to be a gymnast.
ReplyDeleteCurry makes everything good, though.
Even mangos.
Scott, so you're a boxing fencing rocker guy? That's pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteFP, There are plenty of writers that i want to like and can't. That's always interesting to me. You and Woolf are similar, but you're not exactly the same. And since clarity is so important to you, perhaps that difference is big enough to keep you from getting into her work. I'm surprised you like Big D, LOL.
What a great discussion! I'm sad that I didn't make the time to come over here and participate yesterday, so forgive me if what I say has already been said
ReplyDeleteDomey, I think Woolf accomplished what she wanted to accomplish - she made you look twice and question something, and from what I remember of studying Virginia Woolf, many believed she did everything with a very specific purpose. It wasn't always clear to me what she was trying to do, but after questioning things in Orlando, I remember getting much more out of the text than I would have if particular elements "were just like everything else."
With that said - and people probably already said it up above - I believe the creative quote usage brings another layer to the story and does what Jane mentions at the beginning: shocks the reader out of her complacency about the scene. Getting the reader to ask why can be very powerful.
Getting the reader to ask why can be powerful, but it can also be distracting and create artificial distance.
ReplyDeleteTo put it most coarsely, clever and intentional literary gimmicks can have the exact same effect as typos and mechanical errors if you are not extremely careful.
Nevets: That is, of course, very true, but Virginia Woolf didn't go around making typos and grammatical errors to make her readers ask why. She did this on purpose, I'm pretty sure, especially since it happens throughout the book.
ReplyDeleteMichelle, not questioning whether or not she did it on purpose. I'm convinced she did. What I was saying is actually that even as an intentional device, it can have the same impact as a typo or a mechanical error. It's a double-edged sword.
ReplyDeleteNevets: Oh, I see what you're saying, yes. I remember having a discussion similar to this in my college English classes. I think the conclusion we came to was that it depends on what kind of a reader is examining the text - if they examine it at all. I remember one student getting angry because e.e. cummings didn't capitalize things. It's bad grammar, they said. Yeah, well...
ReplyDeleteFP: No, it's not you, it's Bill S. There is so much sex talk in his plays that in the 18th century a guy named Tom Bowdler published an edition of the plays that edited out all the double entendres and it was so infamous that the word "bowdlerize" entered the language to mean "cleaning up to fit prudishness." Some passages in Shakespeare, even in his really serious plays, are just...well, there's no other word for it but obscene. Which some of us like.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to try to guess why Dr. Malasarn wants to be called "Big Daddy."
Why can't all of our comment discussions be like this?
ReplyDeleteThis is a family blog, mister doctor!
ReplyDeleteSo, Domey, I haven't tried this technique very often since college. I played with it a smidge today over on Flashy Fiction. It's an un-edited flash response, but I think the technique worked okay-ish.
ReplyDeleteHey Nevets, thanks a lot for the link. You're use of quotations feels more systematic in this piece. I've done similar things, and I do like the feel of it. It somehow puts me closer into the narrator's head. Cool story!
ReplyDeleteUgh, you're right it wan't borderline random. Hrm. I'm too much of a rule monkey. lol
ReplyDelete