City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2016 "What's the Use of Trying to Read Shakespeare?": Modes of Memory in Virginia Woolf's Fiction and Essays Sara Remedios Bloom The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1584 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] “WHAT’S THE USE OF TRYING TO READ SHAKESPEARE?”: MODES OF MEMORY IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S FICTION AND ESSAYS by SARA REMEDIOS BLOOM A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2016 © 2016 SARA REMEDIOS BLOOM All Rights Reserved ii “What’s the Use of Trying to Read Shakespeare?”: Modes of Memory in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction and Essays by Sara Remedios Bloom This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ________________________ __________________________________________ Date Carrie Hintz Chair of Examining Committee ________________________ __________________________________________ Date Mario Di Gangi Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Mario Di Gangi Rebecca Mlynarczyk THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT “What’s the Use of Trying to Read Shakespeare?”: Modes of Memory in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction and Essays by Sara Remedios Bloom Advisor: Carrie Hintz This dissertation maps the relationship between Virginia Woolf’s fiction and essays, and William Shakespeare’s person and plays. I argue that Woolf’s writing is intended as an interactive practice of cultural memory, challenging her readers to become responders and to engage critically with the canon. I further argue that Woolf offers herself as inheritor of a literary practice that actively seeks to shape the values and social ideology of the time. The introduction defines three modes of memory operating in Woolf’s work: memory as opiate; memory as political instrument; and memory as dialectic. The first chapter shows the cultural memory of Shakespeare in Woolf’s time as both opiate and instrument, and traces Woolf’s reaction against such reduction in “A Room of One’s Own.” The second chapter examines Woolf’s use of direct allusion and quotation in her early novels, culminating with her masterful use of the dialectic memory of Shakespeare to critique the British Empire in Mrs. Dalloway. The third chapter examines The Years and Three Guineas as Woolf’s effort to engage with the memorial project of a Shakespearean history play. Finally, the last chapter considers Woolf’s masterpiece, The Waves, as her own retelling of Hamlet, an elegy for an empire that she knows must fall, and an effort to define the succeeding narrative. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the following wonderful people: Carrie Hintz, whose generous support and insightful candor has guided this project expertly. I will not forget the afternoon Carrie offered herself, in whispered tones at the back of a student conference, as supervisor; she has shown me a model of mentoring and friendship for which I am profoundly grateful, and that I hope to be able to pay forward to my own students. Mario Di Gangi, whose guidance through both the Orals and the dissertation has been invaluable. I have learned not only about Shakespeare, but about teaching, mentoring, and leading by example, from the opportunity to work with Mario and to study in a department under his leadership. Rebecca Mlynarczyk, who has been one of the warmest, kindest, and most supportive mentors I could ask for. Her willingness to step in and join the Committee late in the game is truly a gift. Jane Marcus, who is not here to see how this project has concluded, but whom I hope would be proud. Jane offered her students a model of feminist scholarship that still left room for family, a lesson in how to be an iconoclast without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Her stewardship in the early days of this project, despite failing health, defined its course – and, in many ways, my career. She is missed, and remembered. Joe Loewenstein, who told me I was good at English, guided me to my first job as a teacher, and challenged me to pursue the PhD. Marina MacKay, who accidentally called me out in her 20th Century British Literature course for not recognizing the Cymbeline in Mrs. Dalloway – in which moment, this project was born. Tony and Katie Remedios, about whom enough cannot be said. Their unwavering support and care has guided me from birth, and has taught me to seek the compassion, the complexity, and the critical assessment of the world that I have tried to uncover in Woolf. And last but not least, Jared Bloom, who has endlessly cheered, cajoled, guilted, and praised this project to the finish line. I am lucky to have him. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Writing the Nation: History, Memory, and Literature CHAPTER 1 42 Shakespeare for Girls CHAPTER 2 76 Thinking in Common: Memories of Shakespeare in Woolf’s Early Novels CHAPTER 3 110 Writing the Nation As It Is and Should Be: The Years as History Plan CHAPTER 4 135 An Elegy for Something Rotten: The Waves as Hamlet CONCLUSION 162 vi INTRODUCTION Writing the Nation: History, Memory, and Literature “From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself. And I see this when I have a shock.” “A Sketch of the Past” 72 “For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. Jane Austen should have laid a wreath upon the grave of Fanny Burney, and George Eliot done homage to the robust shade of Eliza Carter—the valiant old woman who tied a bell to her bedstead in order that she might wake early and learn Greek. All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she—shady and amorous as she was—who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits.” “A Room of One’s Own” 71-72 In “A Room of One’s Own,” Woolf famously asserts that “masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice” (A Room 65). What she means is twofold. First, Woolf means to assert that masterpieces are produced within a cultural context that shapes the horizon of artistic possibilities at that time. Politics, religion, values, education, artistic traditions, social norms, means of production... all these influence the artist’s experience of the world, and in so doing, they influence what the artist produces. Moreover, to the extent that all these things—political structures, religious institutions, social conventions, education, infrastructure—are inherited from one generation to the next, the culture that influences the artist in the moment of production is itself influenced by the past, by what has been collectively thought and said and done by past societies, and actively 1 and passively brought forward into the present. The “experience of the mass” of individuals from the past who contribute to the lived experience of the artist in the present is therefore expressed by and through her art. The birth of a masterpiece is not “solitary” to the artist, but inclusive of the culture and the mass of individual voices culture contains. Second, just as the birth of a masterpiece is not "solitary" to the writer, it is also not "single." Masterpieces are reborn again and again in being made part of the canon, as each new generation engages with the art and reaffirms its value and meaning. That's to say: a masterpiece is a masterpiece not in itself, but because we continue to read it, and because each time we pick it back up, we reaffirm its importance, and thereby increase its importance for generations to come. Each time the piece is picked up, it is reborn for that generation and for generations to follow. Art is influenced by history and culture, and art influences history and culture going forward. This idea of the masterpiece as temporally complex—as evoking the life experience of many, and as being itself re-imagined and re-created over generations through the canon— anticipates a version of cultural memory that understands art as reflexive and anachronic. Woolf anticipates Frederic Jameson’s insight in The Political Unconscious (1981) that “texts come before us as the always-already-read; we apprehend them through sedimented layers of previous interpretations, or—if the text is brand-new—through the sedimented reading habits and categories developed by those inherited interpretive traditions” (Jameson 9).