Open Research Online Oro.Open.Ac.Uk
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Haunted houses: influence and the creative process in Virginia Woolf’s novels Thesis How to cite: De Gay, Jane (1998). Haunted houses: influence and the creative process in Virginia Woolf’s novels. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 1998 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0000e191 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk 0NP--ZS7t?1 CTEVIý Haunted Houses Influence and the Creative Process in Virginia Woolf's Novels Jane de Gay, B. A. (Oxon. ) Thesis submitted for the qualification of Ph. D. Department of Literature, The Open University 14 August 1998 \ -fnica 0P 7 O-C,C- "n"Al"EA) For Wayne Stote and in memory of Alma Berry This influence, by which I mean the consciousness of other groups impinging upon ourselves; public opinion; what other people say and think; all those magnets which attract us this way to be like that, or repel us the other and make us different from that; has never been analysed in any of those Lives which I so much enjoy reading, or very superficially. 'A Sketch Past' - Virginia Woolf, of the Abstract This thesis argues that rather than being an innovative, modernist writer, Virginia Woolfs methods, themes, and aspirations were conservative in certain central ways, for her novels were influenced profoundly by the work of writers from earlier eras. This argument is developed both by demonstrating that Woolf was influenced by other writers, and also by exploring the dynamics of how this process of influence took place. The thesis contends that this process included identification with past writers and a longing for the literary past, which complicated Woolfs attempts to negotiate the past and its values. After a chapter examining theoretical approaches to the concept of literary influence, the thesis makes a detailed study of Woolf's engagement with her influences in eight of her novels. Woolf s responses to influence are divided into three phases. In the first phase, up to the mid- 1920s, she wrestled with existing perceptions of the woman writer as she looked to female precursors as role models and struggled with their legacies. At the same time, she sought refuge from such a problematic inheritance by turning to her male precursors to try and gain covert access to the literary traditions which were thought to be the birthright of the men of her generation. In the second phase of her career, in the late 1920s, Woolf continued to deal with the absence of a ready-made tradition by elegizing writers she had known and the literary traditions they represented. In the process of mourning other writers, it is suggested, Woolf re- made them in her imagination to be like herself. This process of identification continued in the third phase, in The Naves and Between the Acts, when Woolf drew on the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge, respectively, to explore and develop her mature identity as a writer. Acknowledgements All material in this thesis is previously unpublished in its current form. A version of a short extract from Chapter 6 appeared in The English Review, 8: 3 (1998), as 'Orlando and its Muse' and a version of part of Chapter 8 appeared in Critical Survey 10: 3 (1998), as "'The bray of the gramophones and the voices of the poets": Art and Political Crisis in Between the Acts'. Most of the research for this thesis was done at the Bodleian Library: thanks to the staff there for their help over the years. The thesis draws on archive research in the United States: special thanks to Karen V. Kukil and Martin Antonetti of the Rare Books Room, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and Stephen Crook of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. Two research trips to the United States archives were made possible with the financial support of the Open University Arts Faculty Research Committee, one of which was co-funded by the British Academy, in the form of a Small Personal Award granted to Lizbeth Goodman and myself. My work has benefited from conversation, encouragement, and feedback from colleagues and fellow conference delegates, particularly Katharine Cockin, Diana Henderson, Mark Hussey and board members of the Woolf Studies Annual, Mary Joannou and John Lucas, Andrew McNeillie, and Stephen Regan. Angela Redgwell and the Open University Academic Computing Service have helped me out with computing problems on more than one occasion; Anne Ford saved the day by lending me a replacement computer when mine was stolen. Thanks also to Joan and Edmund de Gay, Jonathan de Gay, Margaret and Winston Stote, the Goodman family, and Lisa McShine. Special thanks to Suzanne Raitt for honest and sound advice and stimulating conversations; to Lizbeth Goodman, for her belief in my work from the start, for her continued support and encouragement, and for the countless opportunities she has thrown my way; and to Jane Rose, who was a sympathetic manager in the earlier years of my research. Finally, many thanks to Wayne Stote, without whose constant nagging, lengthy absences, and unfailing cynicism towards my ideas this thesis might never have been started, let alone finished. Contents Abbreviations Introduction i Chapter 1. 'The influence of something upon somebody' 1 Part I: The Search for Role Models Chapter 2. From Woman Reader to Woman Writer: The Voyage Out 29 Chapter 3. Tradition and Exploration in Night and Day 55 Chapter 4. Culture and Survival: Jacob's Room and Mrs Dalloway 82 Part II: Elegies Chapter 5. To the Lighthouse and the Ghost of Leslie Stephen 102 Chapter 6. Reclaiming the Past: Orlando and V. Sackville-West 144 Part III: Identification Chapter 7. The Waves as Woolfs Prelude 173 Chapter 8. Talking with Coleridge in Between the Acts 201 Conclusion: Virginia Woolfs Haunted Houses 229 Bibliography 236 Abbreviations 3G Three Guineas, intro. by Hermione Lee (1938; London: Hogarth Press, 1986) BA Between the Acts, ed. and intro. by Frank Kermode (1941; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) CE Collected Essays,4 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1966-67) CR The Common Reader, ed. and intro. by Andrew McNeillie, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1925-32; repr. 1984-86) D Diary, ed. by Anne Olivier Bell, asst. ed. Andrew McNeillie, 5 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1977-84) E Essays, by Andrew McNeillie ed. (London: Hogarth, 1986 -) JR Jacob's Room, ed. and intro. by Kate Flint (1922; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) L Letters, ed. by Nigel Nicolson, asst. ed. Joanne Trautmann Banks, 6 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1975-1980) MB Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings, ed. and intro. by Jeanne Schulkind (1976; repr. Triad/Granada, 1978) MD Mrs Dalloway, ed. and intro. by Claire Tomalin (1925; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) ND Night and Day, ed. and intro. by Suzanne Raitt (1919; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) 0 Orlando, ed. and intro. by Rachel Bowlby (1928; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) QB Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf. A Biography, 2 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1972) Roonz A Room of One's Own (1929; repr. London: Grafton, 1977) TL To the Lighthouse, ed. and intro. by Margaret Drabble (1927; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) VO The Voyage Out, ed. and intro. by Loma Sage (1915; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) W The Waves, ed. and intro. by Gillian Beer (1931; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) Occasional references to editions other than those listed above are identified in footnotes. Introduction This influence, by which I mean the consciousness of other groups impinging upon ourselves; public opinion; what other people say and think; all those magnets which attract us this way to be like that, or repel us the other and make us different from that; has never been analysed in any of those Lives which I so much enjoy reading, or very superficially. - Virginia Woolf, 'A Sketch of the Past' (MB, 93) Many scholars of Virginia Woolf have tended to accept her view of herself as a 'revolutionist' and a'reformer' (MB, 147), and have taken it for granted that her work was innovative and original. I She has traditionally been placed with Eliot and Joyce as a modernist, and although recent accounts by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Makiko Minow-Pinkney, and Lyn Pykett have sought to view Woolf as a woman writer first and a modernist second, they nonetheless suggest that her innovations are specifically feminist strategies for reforming patriarchy. 2 This thesis, by contrast, contends that Woolfs methods, themes, and aspirations were conservative in certain central ways, for her novels were influenced profoundly by the work of writers from earlier eras. It argues that she stays closer to the literary past than most of her contemporaries and that in her attempts to reform the novel she had to negotiate the legacy of a particularly English literary past. I will develop this argument by demonstrating that Woolf was influenced by other writers, but also by exploring the dynamics of how this process of influence took place. I argue that these dynamics included an identification with past writers and a longing for the literary past, which complicated the process of negotiating the past and its values. Woolf engaged closely with other writers in her novels, entering into imaginative relationships with them which impacted deeply on her writing practice and on her identity as a writer.