Woolf: Across the Generations Selected Papers from the Twelfth International Conference on Virginia Woolf Woolf: Across the Generations Selected Papers from the Twelfth International Conference on Virginia Woolf Sonoma State University, Sonoma, California 6-9 June 2002 Edited by Merry M. Pawlowski And Eileen Barrett A full-text print-on-demand version of this book is available at the Clemson University Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing. Copyright 2003 by Center for Virginia Woolf Studies housed at California State University, Bakersfield Published by the Center for Virginia Woolf Studies at California State University, Bakersfield directed by Merry M. Pawlowski. Layout and online design by Don David. Print-on-demand copies produced at Clemson University Digital Press at the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing using Adobe Photoshop Elements CS, Adobe InDesign CS, and Microsoft Word 2000. 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An order form is available at the digital press Web site (see above) under “SCROLL” and linked to the themed issue page entitled “Virginia Woolf International.” Front cover illustration: Across the Generations by Marylu Downing Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: HOW WE CROSSED THE GENERATIONS..........................8 Woolf's Legacy THE OBITUARISTS` VERDICTS “IT IS DIFFICULT TO ESTIMATE WHAT VALUE POSTERITY WILL PUT UPON HER WORK” JOHN O`LONDON`S WEEKLY, APRIL 11, 1941 ............................................................................................11 OPERATION EQUAL GOOD: WOOLF, CHANTAL MOUFFE, AND THE ETHICS OF DEMOCRACY IN A TIME OF WAR.................................................. 21 WOOLF RE-VISITS WEMBLEY: PRE-WAR BLOOMSBURY AESTHETICS AND INTERWAR BRITISH EMPIRE..................................................................... 26 (NO) “LOOPHOLES OF RETREAT”: THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF PARKS AND GARDENS IN WOOLF’S LIFE AND WORK................................................ 36 Reading Generational Divides in the Novels GENERATIONS, LEGACIES, AND IMPERIALISMS: THE GRECO-TURKISH WAR AND JACOB’S ROOM...................................................................................... 55 SHIPWRECKS ALONG THE CORNISH COAST AS THE CONTINUING CHAOS INVIRGINIA WOOLF’S JACOB’S ROOM AND TO THE LIGHTHOUSE........................................................................................................... 63 TO THE LIGHTHOUSE: VIRTUAL REALITY AND RETRIEVING THE MOTHER.................................................................................................................... 69 THE SAVAGE NORTH: TARRYING WITH THE PRIMITIVE IN TO THE LIGHTHOUSE..........................................................................................................123 TURKISH TALES: MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU'S TURKISH EMBASSY LETTERS AND VIRGINIA WOOLF'S ORLANDO ..............................................131 WILDE, WILDE WOOLF: THE ROMANCE OF DORIAN GRAY AND ORLANDO.................................................................................................................136 (RE) FIGURATION OF GENDER AND GENERATION IN WOOLF’S ORLANDO AND STRACHEY’S ELIZABETH AND ESSEX ...............................143 MOMENTS OF GREENING: ECOFEMINISM AND HUMAN ECOLOGY IN BETWEEN THE ACTS ............................................................................................151 "ORTS, SCRAPS AND FRAGMENTS": THE POSTMODERN LEGACY OF BETWEEN THE ACTS ............................................................................................157 VIRGINIA WOOLF'S BETWEEN THE ACTS AS POLITICAL SATIRE............164 THE PAGEANTRY OF THE PAST AND THE REFLECTION OF THE PRESENT: HISTORY, “REALITY,” AND FEMINISM IN VIRGINIA WOOLF’S BETWEEN THE ACTS. ...........................................................................................170 Generation, Gender and Woolf SEEING WOOLF DIFFERENTLY/SEEING DIFFERENT WOOLFS: THE PLACE OF THE PERSONAL IN LESBIAN AND BISEXUAL READINGS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF...................................................................................................177 QUEERING VIRGINIA: HOW D’YOU DO IT?.....................................................183 "VIRGINIA WOOLF AND TONI MORRISON: PRESENTING THE PAST"...189 PROTECTIVE VALUES: VIRGINIA WOOLF, GASTON BACHELARD, AND THE AESTHETICS OF SEMI- ................................................................................195 INTERRELATION AND SEPARATION: DIALECTICAL TENSIONS IN PAUL CÉZANNE’S THE LARGE BATHERS AND VIRGINIA WOOLF’S THE WAVES .................................................................................................................................... 200 PIETY AND REVOLT: WOOLF AND THE VICTORIANS ................................ 208 VOICES FROM BELOW: THE SONG OF ANON IN VIRGINIA WOOLF ........214 Teaching Woolf to Present and Future Generations GRRLS AND EZINE FICTION: TEACHING A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES TODAY....................................................................219 VIRGINIA WOOLF AND FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION................................... 224 AESTHETE TO RADICAL TO…? WHAT HAVE WE GAINED AND WHAT HAVE WE LOST?..................................................................................................... 229 TEACHING WOOLF IN THE CONTEXT OF SOUND BITES, CHAT ROOMS, AND WRITERS AS CELEBRITIES........................................................................ 235 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS OF WOOLF TITLES............................................... 240 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................... 242 APPENDIX: SYBIL OLDFIELD............................................................................ 243 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................ 246 Introduction: How We Crossed the Generations J.J. Wilson In preparation for writing this brief introduction, I read several of the earlier samples of the genre which were printed in those wonderful hard copy volumes of the Selected Papers from the annual Woolf conferences by Pace University (which does not mean that I am not elated by this new electronic version scrolling before us, I assure you.) Those introductions themselves make good reading, rather like inhaling all the italicized interludes in The Waves without reading the monologues in between. Indeed, I was tempted just to lift the Vara Neverow and Mark Hussey first paragraph, which begins, “. blessed with four flawlessly sunny days, the conference was an intimate and intense encounter of common readers and professors, amateurs and experts, aficionados and critics” (10). Equally apt would have been the late Paul Connolly, starting characteristically with an interactive question: "Why do people attend a Virginia Woolf conference? . To return the tribute of our learning to that love?" (1). And from Diane Gillespie and Leslie Hankins a wonderful expansion of Woolf's "party consciousness" to "the conference consciousness" and a description of us all arriving that would fit as well for the 12th Annual Conference as their 6th: Inevitably, the conference participants arrive in ones and twos, some jet-lagged and disoriented, most filled with varying degrees of confidence and self-consciousness, anticipation and nervousness, all expecting to be swept up through some invisible artistry into a vitalizing whole (xii). Georgia Johnston moved on to question the very nature of the act of remembering a conference: "To remember the conference as it was, however, is an impossible task" which every year the director attempts, though we all realize that "such an all-impossible, imagined omniscience cannot be written" (3). Fortunately, however, I do not have to depend on my memory or my omniscience, as Merry Pawlowski and Eileen Barrett have gotten so many of the papers up on the web for all the world to see. Hail to them both and to Merry's student assistants Don Leonides and Rebecca Benas for making this contribution to Woolf scholarship and to all of our failing memories possible. Eileen Barrett was present at the beginning, helping me word the invitation for paper proposals in inclusive language, driving up from the Bay Area to Sonoma many times to help us organize the juried papers into suitable and stimulating panels, which was actually a fascinating process, testing our senses of classification, connections, synthesis, and even marketing. She also worked with us on the great day when the Program copy got put to bed. So Eileen was already intimately acquainted with the "table of contents" before she took on this task with Merry Pawlowski -- who keeps taking on tasks, bless her! -- of editing the first ever electronic version of the Selected Papers. While nothing could include it all, not even the hospitable spaciousness of cyberspace, she and Merry have done as much as is humanly possible to provide a virtual conference for the mind here. For example, the editors wisely chose Sybil Oldfield's historical approach to Woolf's legacy through reading her obituaries and thus the very "first generation's attempt to evaluate the lasting achievement of Virginia