Ambition, Dignity and the Pursuit of Status: Parenthood in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'

Where does one begin in writing about War and Peace? With most editions being well in excess of 1000 pages and a cast of over 500 characters, it is no mean task. Indeed, one of the things that makes Tolstoy unique is the way in which his novels contain so many strands of story, all intertwined in different ways. The only way it would be possible to offer comment would be to choose just one theme and set of characters and relationships. This is what I have done, deciding to look at the relationships between four sets of parents and children; The Bolkonskis, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys. Another angle which would have been interesting would have been an examination of how Tolstoy treats the institution and values of marriage, but given his own life and also the mammoth amount of material on the subject available from Anna Karenina, I have decided that the best theme to explore is the values and ambitions of parents, with regards to their children. 

An important thing which I noticed in my reading of this novel, something which I must say fits in very well with all that I know of Tolstoy as a person, is that the narration of War and Peace is all presented very factually; we have a third person narrator who very much sticks to the conventions of the technique. There is no free indirect speech here, everything we learn of the characters (beyond their own speech) we are told, there is very little room for interpretation beyond what we are given. There are not real deviations of many different points of view. Not that this is necessarily a problem, more just something which influences the way in which we analyse the themes within the text.

 The edition that I have read is the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation in the Wordsworth Classics edition, 2001. The way in which some names of characters are translated is not personally to my taste but to avoid confusion I have resisted the temptation to change them. At the end of this post, along with the references, I have included notes on the characters, in case any confusion arises.

*************

Perhaps the most striking of all the parental figures in War and Peace is Princess Anna Drubetskaya, an aristocratic woman fallen on hard times and lacking in societal influence. Her son is Borís, and the Princess’ soul aim appears to be doing whatever it takes, losing whatever dignity and respect necessary, in order to secure him a career. Indeed, our first introduction to the character of Anna Drubetskaya is in the middle of her efforts to secure a position for her son by essentially begging Prince Vasíly Kuragin to use his influence to help her.

‘… She gave him an ingratiating and appealing smile and took his hand that he might not go away…. “Listen to me, prince,” said she, “I have never yet asked you for anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my father’s friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God’s sake to do this for my son – and I shall always regard you as a benefactor” she added hurriedly.’¹ 

It would appear as though Anna Drubetskaya has gone to whatever depths to convince the prince to assist her, giving up her dignity and even attempting to manipulate the prince. Her dignity is certainly is question when ‘Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone her face resumed its former cold artificial expression. She returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was accomplished.’²

 

Anna Drubetskaya embodies the expectations of society in Russia of this era -  her raison d’être is the success of her offspring, she has not needs or desires of her own and is willing to go to great lengths of self-sacrifice in order to help him. However, there is a stranger, darker side to her behaviour, in that she really does not care who she tramples to achieve her goals; in this sense, at least, she seems manipulative, cold and calculated. Her treatment of Pierre when his father is dying is essentially quite cruel. His father has literally just passed away when Anna Drubetskaya says to him, ‘“You know, uncle promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Borís. But he has no time [to alter his will]. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father’s wish?”’³ It is true that she tells Countess Rostova “Let people think what they will of me, it’s really all the same to me when my son’s fate is at stake,”⁴ but her steely determination towards this aim makes her an unpleasant person and her son’s desires (if indeed he has any) are not in any way explored. 

Prince Nicholas Bolkonski treats his daughter, Princess Maria, appallingly. He is exceptionally controlling of her, he ‘himself undertook his daughter’s education… and arranged her life so that her whole time was occupied.’⁵ In addition to this, he bullies and deliberately humiliates her, while all the while being privately extremely dependent upon her. Princess Maria, for her part, is very pious and self-sacrificing, but is also completely terrified of her father. ‘The princess looked in a scared way at her father’s eyes glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, and it was plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her fear would prevent her understanding any of her father’s further explanations…’⁶Prince Nicholas deliberately humiliates his daughter in front of her prospective suitor, purely through fear of abandonment, evident in the fact that,

‘the question was whether he could ever bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Maria, little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him. “And why should she marry,” he thought. “To be unhappy for certain. There’s Lise, married to Andrew – a better husband one would think could hardly be found nowadays – but is she contented with her lot? And who would marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward!”’⁷

This strange mixture of resentment and dependence, desire to protect his daughter from pain whilst at the same time apparently valuing her so little, is a complex and strange issue, especially when juxtaposed with Prince Nicholas’ treatment of his son, Andrew, whom he treats almost as an equal and, at least in terms of Andrew’s wife, sides with blindly. Prince Andrew also seems to have a deep understanding of his father and his ways, evident in this speech he makes to Pierre, ‘My father is one of the most remarkable men of his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel, he has too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is terrible, and now he has the authority of a commander-in-chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor… So I am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and now and then can save him from actions which would torment him afterwards.’¹⁶ Both Andrew and Maria have a profound level of love and respect for their father, who does seem to genuinely love and care for them both, in spite of his behaviour at times. Perhaps it should also be noted that the role of fathers at the time this novel was published was obviously very different to the way it is now.

Prince Nicholas is an incredibly selfish parent – the needs of his children always fall secondary to his own. On the subject of his devoted son, Prince Andrew, wishing to marry Natasha, ‘[Nicholas] could not comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life was already ending. “If only they would let me end my days as I want to,” thought the old man, “then they might do as they please.”²² This almost suggests that the Prince does not really care about the good of his children; overall, he is more concerned with his own peace and quiet.  On the subject of Prince Andrew’s desire to marry Natasha Rostova, Prince Nicholas has an interesting array of arguments against it. 

‘In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards birth, wealth or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was not as young as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. “Fourthly and finally… I beg you to put it off for a year… then if your love or passion or obstinacy – as you please – is still as great, marry!”’²³ 

The reasons for opposition the Prince deems most important are interesting, in that they all centre entirely on financial or social gain.  

Based upon the family of Tolstoy’s wife Sofia (née Behr)⁸, the Rostovs are a classic example of the archetypal affectionate family. The love of all three children and both parents for the eldest son, Nicholas, is quite startling and ‘on his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero and their darling Nikolenka.’⁹ The family has limited money and yet it spends a lot on Nicholas (more than it should, really). Examples of the loving, close nature of the Rostov parents and their children are repeated throughout the novel, as when Nicholas is described as being ‘enfolded in the poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household.’¹⁰ Countess Rostova shows a very limited interest in issues of marriage, apart from having some dread of a marriage between her son and his cousin Sonya ‘which might hinder Nicholas from making a brilliant match.’¹¹ Beyond this, the Countess appears to approach her affairs with a degree of naivety, as does her husband. The Countess is even under the impression that “’till now I have always been my children’s’ friend and had their full confidence.”¹² which shows that she is ‘repeating the mistake of many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them.’¹³ Both she and her husband are terrible with money and judging by Nicholas, they have not managed to impart any wisdom in this regard to their children.

The Countess relies very heavily on her son later on in the novel, when it comes to issues of family finance. For example, ‘[Nicholas] found in letters from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents’.²⁴ The Countess shows a far less pleasant side to her personality when it comes to her manipulation of the feelings of her son, and ‘in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and that letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and they would all have to go begging.’²⁵ To some extent, one could argue that this is the cost of having been so doted upon in his youth, but the expectations placed upon Nicholas are extreme, and show that even the Countess is not immune to the cold social manoeuvring of the time. ‘She told him that her only hope of getting their affairs disentangled, now lay in his marrying Julie Karagina’.²⁶ After the death of the Count, responsibilities fall even harder onto the shoulders of poor Nicholas, although in keeping with the close and loving nature of the family, he accepts them readily. However, his situation is a far from easy one. ‘The debts of [Count Rostov] amounted to double the value of the property… Friends and relatives advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance. But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father’s memory, which he held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing, and accepted the inheritance together with the obligation to pay the debts.’²⁷ Nicholas’ feelings for his parents even after the position in which he has been placed demonstrates what many people believe make up the fundamental of essence of an ideal family; unconditional love. The Countess certainly does not help to improve matters for Nicholas, as 

‘[she] could not conceive of a life without the luxurious conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage (which they did not keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive article of food for herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a present as a surprise for Natasha, or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself’.²⁸

The younger Rostov daughter, Natasha, is very outgoing and flirtatious (perhaps what would now be described as ‘boy-mad’). Her ‘honour’ is not very well protected, it would seem and her behaviour is never curtailed by her parents, even when it is inappropriate for her age. Her mother is aware that she is too young to marry and so her neglect presumably comes from a lack of noticing her daughter’s behaviour. Indeed, the Countess is outraged when Nicholas’ friend Denísov proposes to Natasha and is ‘indignant that they should have dared to treat this little Natasha as grown up.’¹⁴ As much as the Rostovs do not do their offspring any favours when it comes to financial stability, when Natasha is sixteen and discussing with her mother a possible union with Borís, her mother’s reasons why the marriage would not be a good idea are ‘because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a relation… and because you yourself do not love him.’²¹ That Countess Rostova considers the latter point  a reason to be acknowledged among the others is surprising, not least when looked at in relation to the other parents discussed here. Her concern for the long-term happiness for her daughter, while practical in terms of the financial implications, is also emotional and this is one way in which the Rostov parents are well-rounded.

Ultimately, Natasha’s fate proves to be a good one, but the journey to it is far from easy and she experiences great suffering along the way. The failure of her parents to curtail her behaviour and teach her how to avoid becoming entangled in scandal, is certainly a large part of this. However, the love that pervades the Rostov household is definitely unmatched by any other household presented in the novel.

Where to begin with the Kuragin family? With a father who claims to have no natural affinity for speaking to his own children, who describes his sons as fools, and yet has a strangely determined interest in their marrying well, it is no surprise that they are so dysfunctional. Prince Vasíly Kuragin supports his daughter, Hélène, in seducing as many men as possible if it will lead to her success within society. Hélène, like her brother Anatole, is sexually free (there are even rumours that the two have had a sexual relationship) and she has several affairs. Prince Kuragin attempts to marry his son Anatole off to Princess Maria Bolkonskya, reminding him that “for you, everything depends on this.”¹⁵ His concerns regarding his children amount simply to ensuring that they make financially and socially acceptable matches; their happiness, mental health or reputations seem to matter very little to him.

Bizarrely, Prince Vasíly’s wife is hardly ever mentioned in the novel; indeed, for a very large part of the novel I assumed her to be dead. The few contributions she makes are pointless at best, and unpleasant and worst. For example, upon being congratulated on her daughter’s upcoming marriage to Pierre, Hélène’s mother ‘did not reply, she was too tormented by jealousy of her daughter’s happiness.’¹⁷Now this is hardly healthy. It would appear that Prince Vasíly wife, who as far as I could make out remains unnamed, is as terrible as her husband when it comes to conspiring and manipulating for the benefit of their children, while at the same time entirely neglecting to bring their children up to be well-balanced and possessing of good morals. When Pierre receives a letter from her, he sees that ‘there was a conspiracy against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife…’¹⁸

 

The strange involvement of the parents in their children’s’ affairs is very different to the involvement of Anna Drubetskaya in those of her son, in that the latter is motivated by a profound and all-encompassing love and a desire to see her son succeed as best he possibly can. There seems to be something a little more sinister when it comes to the behaviour of the Kuragin parents. Prince Vasíly himself is unpleasantly involved in the relations between Pierre and Hélène. After they separate, Kuragin tells Pierre that ‘Hélène is as innocent before you as Christ was before the Jews¹⁹ and states ‘…I know all about it…it is simply a misunderstanding… [if you do not reconcile] let me tell you it’s quite likely you’ll have to suffer for it.’²⁰

It would appear that all issues regarding parenthood in War and Peace focus around the pursuit of status, be that through the attainment of further wealth, through good marriage, or through good educations or careers. Almost all of the parents are lacking in some way; the Rostovs fail massively when it comes to providing financial stability, Kuragin has produced emotionally unstable offspring and Bolkonski has a daughter who not only fears him, but is also fairly unable to cope with life. It could be said that the Princess Drubetskaya is a healthy example of good parenting, but even she has put too much into her son, who is himself embarrassed at times by her behaviour.  The pursuit of status is symptomatic of this particular culture during this era, when love meant very little next to ‘a good match’ and it is not necessarily a criticism when parents attempted to attain this for their offspring. More generally, Tolstoy succeeds in this novel in creating a full cast of characters, situations, relationships and circumstances, vast in scope and yet minute in detail. I did not find it as enjoyable as Anna Karenina, hitting a wall about halfway through which required I take a bit of a break from reading. It is, however, unquestionably a work of genius and an important piece of literature. I would recommend this novel to anybody, without question, although it would be advisable to take it slowly and just enjoy it. It is certainly not a novel to be rushed.

My next blog post will be on the subject of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, which I will be reading for the Beaconsfield Book Club in North London. I know it may seem strange to be going back to Hardy so soon, but I will do my best to keep the next post as far in subject from the post on Jude the Obscure. Check back in two weeks to have a read. As always, feel free to leave a comment, or contact me on greeninliterature@gmail.com. You can also follow this blog on twitter (@00KVortex).

Thanks,

-       K

Questioning Definitions of Masculinity and Femininity in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'

‘The repetition in a woman’s ear would murder as it fell’

 Macbeth is one of my favourite plays by William Shakespeare. One of the things I noticed upon first tackling this play was the presence of issues surrounding gender and sex; what expectations characters had in this regard and also how they met those expectations. Of all the characters in the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth provide the greatest opportunities for analysis through this lens, although the other characters also have roles and characteristics which either strengthen or draw attention to the gender ambiguity of the Macbeths, or make comment themselves on the nature of gender. The following passage, which comes from the Duncan’s Corpse by Susan Zimmerman, an essay found in A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, helps greatly to illustrate this point:

‘If signification is structured by means of concepts that safely situate phenomena in categories – male/ female, sacramental/ diabolic, familiar/ alien – then Macbeth is about the tenuousness of these distinctions and the psychic and social horror that ensues when they collapse.’

The emasculation of Macbeth, due in part to his own failings and also a result, to some extent, of Lady Macbeth’s treatment of him is an important element of this theme. Masculinity in Macbeth is closely entwined with violence and ambition. Lady Macbeth accuses her husband of being, “too full o’th’ milk of human kindness” – in other words, that he is too woman-like to kill Duncan. Macbeth argues against the murder, not because it is fundamentally wrong, but instead because things are going well for him, as when he says, “We will proceed no further in this business;/ he [Duncan] hath honoured me of late and I have bought/ golden opinions from all sorts of people…”. Macbeth’s inflated sense of ambition could be said to stem from a sense of inadequacy, considering the level of success he already enjoys. He is not ‘his own man’, instead he is weak, selfish, easily manipulated and quick to fixate. Macbeth is easily manipulated by his wife; she preys upon his sense of masculinity, something which is made even more painful by her own lack of traditional femininity. Even when Macbeth is finally able to commit the act of murder, he finds himself breaking down and being unable to complete the cover-up. It falls, then to his wife to protect the couple from suspicion, meaning that again Macbeth has failed to assert himself in a ‘gender-appropriate’ way. Even the first notion of becoming king is planted in Macbeth’s mind by females, although the witches, too, have traditionally masculine appearances which confuse him, evident when she says, “You should be women/ and yet your beards forbid me to interpret/ that you are so.” The role of women in the play is perhaps even more fascinating.

Lady Macbeth is a woman of extreme character and force. Possessed by ambition, she controls, bullies and manipulates her husband, only at the end of the play discovering that even she is human and unable to escape human guilt. In fact, she actually displays a shocking degree of flippancy following the murder, believing that, “A little water clears us of this deed”. When the curtain of guilt finally falls across Lady Macbeth, it manifests itself in a form of madness, which is only evident through sleepwalking and constant hand washing, as though she is unable to properly feel and acknowledge what she has does while conscious. Not only does Lady Macbeth lack the traditional feminine ways but she also rebels against them. Rejecting her femininity, she says, “Come, you spirits/ that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here/ and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;/ stop up the access and passage to remorse,/ that no compunctious visitings of nature/ shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between/ the effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,/ and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,/ wherever in your sightless substances/ you wait on nature’s mischief!” This passage is very fascinating; not least because of the assertion that Lady Macbeth makes that violence is incompatible with femininity. She calls upon the ‘spirits’ to ‘unsex’ her – to remove her female characteristics and replace them with cruelty. She asks that her breasts’ milk be replaced with gall, or poison, and that she no longer experiences the ‘visitings of nature’ (menstruation). This idea that it is impossible to be both cruel and female is interesting, especially when examined alongside the character of Macbeth. It is unbelievably ironic, considering the role played by Lady Macbeth in the murder of Duncan, that when the crime is discovered MacDuff is reluctant to speak of it in front of Lady Macbeth, stating that, “the repetition in a woman’s ear/ would murder as it fell”. This again comes back to the traditional idea that a woman is submissive, fragile and must be protected from the cruelty and evil of men. None of this is true of Lady Macbeth.

 I personally felt a degree of sympathy with Lady Macbeth. It is true, of course, that she is cold and perhaps even slightly psychopathic. She tells Macbeth that if he has committed to the murder of Duncan then he must carry it out and that she has”…given suck and know/ how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me -/ I would, while it was smiling in my face,/ have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums/ and dash’d the brains out had I so sworn as you/ have done to this”. How horrific! To say that she has herself experienced motherhood and loved her child, she would still easily murder it is shocking and I believe that our culture would view it as the worst possible crime. Lady Macbeth is far from good, and she is certainly not someone with whom it is easily possible to sympathise. However, it is important to note that in the context of the era a woman was profoundly trapped in a patriarchal society, which allowed them no life or ambition of their own. That Lady Macbeth must be so cold and lacking in humanity in order to achieve her own agenda is sad but perhaps understandable.

The contrast between the characters of Macbeth and MacDuff is very interesting. MacDuff, upon discovering the murder of his family, is told my Malcolm that he must he manly and not dwell upon it. To this he replies, “I shall do so,/ but I must also feel it as a man”. Thus, to experience emotion is to be embody the true meaning of masculinity. I believe that it is this that we must take from the play, as ultimately Macbeth is defeated and MacDuff prevails. Macbeth’s weakness and ability to be manipulated by women is juxtaposed with MacDuff’s triumph, bravery, goodness and power to feel.

 I found this to be the most difficult post to write so far. Perhaps this is because it is on a Shakespeare play, and the pressure is high, or perhaps it comes from basing the post on notes made months ago. Either way, I would be interested to hear what you all think, because my stats tell me that I actually have a fair few followers!

Next week’s post will be ‘The Representation of Children in Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy’. Following that will hopefully be on Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Thanks for reading,

 - K

Virginia and Vita; 'Orlando: A Biography'

This is my first attempt at analysing and discussing a piece of literature outside of the confines of an essay (aside, I suppose, from the copious notes I made on Macbeth earlier this year). The copy of Orlando that I was reading was actually part of a collection I received for my birthday, which is the Wordsworth Classics hardback edition (published 2007), containing eight different pieces by Woolf. As such, my page number references are totally all over the place and I have developed an even more crooked back as a result of carrying one thousand pages of hardback book with me everywhere I go.

 

I have really enjoyed Orlando, even if at times it became a quite difficult read. I liked it, I think, because it’s so very different from the things I usually read. I’m a pretty dedicated to Realist literature, so this was bound to be an interesting, if slightly irritating, read.

  

Orlando was conceived by Woolf as a ‘writer’s holiday’ of sorts; an escape from more demanding work. It was published on October 11^th 1928, was Woolf’s sixth major novel and was a huge success. It was based upon the life of Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, whose son, Nigel Nicolson, described the novel as, “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature”. Orlando is not overtly homosexual but the protagonist’s change from male to female certainly suggests a love that crosses all gender barriers. This was my first experience of Woolf’s work and I haven’t been disappointed; while the plot at times felt like trying to follow the paths of every spark in a bursting firework, the language is rich and ultimately a journey by itself. It is language with which Orlando himself is concerned; its difficulties, inadequacies but also its power.

 

Of course, the bizarre nature of the plot (Orlando ages only 36 years in a lifetime spanning three centuries) is to be expected in a Modernist piece of literature. According to one of my literary bibles, Studying the Novel by Jeremy Hawthorn, 'modernists question the ‘dogma of realism’ and search for alternatives to the well-made plot, the rounded and lifelike characters and the known world wholly accessible to reasoned and rational enquiry'. Indeed, there is nothing rational about the life of Orlando! Modernism typically focuses on the inner-self and the internal states and processes of the characters’ consciousness. Perhaps, then, this is the reason why at times I was utterly lost in this novel, confused about what was happening, where the action was taking place and even in which century it was taking place! For somebody who has for so long been committed to Realist texts, this has been a very strange, but ultimately rewarding, reading experience.

 

Despite Orlando being the product of the love between two women, I have found in my (admittedly limited) experience that there is a vacuum where the great lesbian literature ought to be found. Of course, we now have Sarah Waters, a hugely gifted researcher before we even begin to admire her books, and also I suppose Jeanette Winterson, although she’s not exactly my cup of tea. There are plenty more, I’m sure. However, I am not speaking about today; I mean if you examine the entire literary cannon. I could mention Sappho (and avoid the obvious joke that "it’s all Greek to me – HA!"). Then there’s Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. But ultimately, there seems to be a void in works throughout history that deal openly with ‘Sapphic love’. Perhaps I am wrong? If anybody can think of any others, feel free to point them out to me!

 

But back to The Well of Loneliness, and this is where it starts to fit together somewhat. Many people are of the opinion that Orlando is, as Vita Sackville-West’s son expressed, a beautiful love letter from one woman to another. I was interested to discover that while Woolf's work is not at all overtly homosexual in content, Radclyffe Hall's really is. I do actually have The Well of Loneliness on my shelf but have yet to read it. Anyway, in my research conducted around my reading of Orlando, I discovered that just under a month after Orlando was first published, The Well of Loneliness was the subject of an obscenity trial (I must admit, I’m quite curious to read it now!). Many people were reluctant to testify in its defence; however both Virginia Woolf and E.M Forster were among those who stepped forward to act as witnesses, although they were not actually allowed by the court in the end. On the topic of those who did not agree to testify for the defence, Woolf is quoted as saying, “they generally put it down to the weak heart of a father, or a cousin who is about to have twins”. I found it interesting to see this scathing comment from a woman who never truly expressed her love for Vita Sackville-West through her writing. 

 

Sackville-West’s son, in describing his mother, said, “she fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was willing to give up everything… How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one infinitely more compassionate than her own”. Perhaps, then, it is a shame that Woolf never properly addressed her passionate love for Sackville-West in her writing. However, in Orlando, Woolf does make a comment on monogamy; ‘Orlando could only suppose that some new discovery had been made about the [human] race; that they were somehow stuck together, couple after couple, but who had made it, and when, she could not guess.’ – p. 517. 

 

Orlando’s switch from male to female opens up many interesting points. I found it very interesting that upon waking from yet another of his strange extended naps, he finds himself to now have the body of a woman. Orlando reacts cooly and, in fact, seems not to really pay much attention, or change her behaviour very much at all. It is only later, when confronted with society, and seeing the different way in which she is now treated, that her behaviour and feelings of self change. This is quite clear here: ‘It is a strange fact, but a true one, that up to this moment she had scarcely given her sex a thought… it was not until she felt the coil of skirts about her legs and the Captain offered, with the greatest politeness, to have an awning spread for her on deck, that she realised with a start the penalties and privileges of her position.'

 

Throughout the novel frustration and fascination with the inadequacies of language are expressed. Within the first few pages, Orlando discovers that, 'green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.' – p.404 I absolutely love this idea; that there are some things simply too complex or divine for words. Woolf does a good job nonetheless. Later, Orlando again finds that, 'Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, another language.' – p.422 When Orlando begins writing, he struggles again with language, '… he now undertook to win immortality against the English language. Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them…' – p. 437. 

Woolf herself was a dire perfectionist, totally incapable of taking criticism (aren’t we all!). I found it interesting, from a socio-biographical viewpoint, to see Orlando suffering so immensely. In contrast with the earlier observation that words fail one when attempting to describe nature, Orlando later wonders, 'Why not simply say what one means and leave it? So he tried saying the grass is green and the sky is blue… looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods.' – p.446. The language here is truly luscious, and we see this contradiction in the uses and applications of language.

I did perhaps go off on a bit of a tangent here, but I began to wonder about the very nature of questioning language itself; the tool with which we analyse and identify the things around us, and, ultimately, define our very selves. To question the ways in which we do these things is a brave thing, I think, and likely to make one start to feel a bit mad.

 

This quotation is magical, 'But if sleep it was, of what nature, we can scarcely refrain from asking, are such sleeps as these? Are they remedial measures – trances in which the most galling memories, events that seem likely to cripple life forever, are brushed with a dark wing which rubs their harshness off and gilds them, even the ugliest and basest, with a lustre, an incandescence? Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to tikme lest it render us asunder? Are we so made thay we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?' – p. 431 These Great Sleeps that Orlando experiences are totally fascinating; I’d love to have a go at analysing them through different critical lenses. But I haven’t really had the time, so for now I’ll just have to allow that quote to float around my mind.

 

I have been entirely converted to Virginia Woolf’s writing, if not completely convinced of the merits of Modernism as a movement. It is only unfortunate that it has taken me twenty years to discover her. In a literary sense, Woolf defines her gender, if not her generation. There was so much more I wanted to mention (Woolf’s reasons for writing a ‘biography’, Orlando’s poem etc) but this will just have to do.; I hope I haven’t bored anybody too much!

 

Even though I didn’t quite feel her love for Vita Sackville-West in Orlando (perhaps only through my own immaturity), I would just like to end this post with something I discovered during my research. It is general knowledge that during her lifetime Virginia Woolf suffered from severe periods of depression. On March 28^th 1941, Woolf committed suicide  by filling her coat pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse. A portion of the River Ouse ran through the town in which I lived for some years as a teenager and the image of Virginia Woolf calmly walking into the water has haunted me for years (that, along with Javier doing the same thing in Les Misérables). I don’t think that the following really needs much further comment, so here is the letter she left for her husband Leonard, with whom she did not have a sexual relationship but whose soul was clearly very deeply entwined with her own.

 

'Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ‘til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. – V'