Virginia Woolf and cinema : Adaptations of Mrs Dalloway. GINESI, Kirsten A. Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19689/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19689/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. 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Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Virginia Woolf and Cinema: Adaptations ofMrs Dalloway Kirsten Ginesi A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2011 Contents Acknowledgements Abstract Introduction Chapter One: Adaptation and Intertextual Webs Chapter Two: Mrs Woolf and Mrs Brown: A Rhetoric of Imitation and Impressions Chapter Three: A Day in the Life of Mrs Dalloway: Impressions and Hysterical Lesbian Chapter Four: Adapting Mrs Dalloway: Stylistic Imitation and the Spectre of Woolf Chapter Five: The Hours: Adapting Mrs Woolf, Mrs Brown, and Mrs Dalloway Conclusion Appendices Endnotes Bibliography Acknowledgements I would like to thank: For their support, patience, advice and encouragement I would like to thank my Director of Studies, Professor Tom RyalJ, and my supervisory team: Dr Suzanne Speidel, Dr. Jill LeBihan and Dr. Catherine Constable. I am indebted to Professor Chas Critcher for securing the funding which enabled the production of this thesis. My friends and family who have supported me over the last seven years, with particular thanks to Dr. Hannah Lavery and Erica Brown for the time they dedicated to listening to my ramblings, for reading various elements of this thesis over the years and , finally, their invaluable feedback. I would also like to thank Dr. Leigh Wetherall-Dickson for her unfailing advice and encouragement. And to Ben and Aleyna, for being there. Abstract This thesis proposes a return to the issue of fidelity criticism in adaptation studies through a detailed consideration of the adaptations of Virginia Woolfs Mrs Dalloway (1925). Within adaptation studies the issue of fidelity and the role of the source novel have been relegated to the sidelines in response to a logophilic prejudice which dominated early studies, and as a consequence intertextuality and genre have become more pronounced. I redress this negation of the source text, theorising new ways of conceiving of the source-adaptation relationship. I explicitly focus upon source-associated intertextualities to illustrate how a return to fidelity can open up a plethora of readings rather than close them down. In doing so the importance of the source text is foregrounded, as it is through the source that these intertexts are introduced, whilst demonstrating that two seemingly exclusive approaches to adaptation can be married in what I term a "web of intertextuality". I develop Gerard Genette's theory of stylistic imitation in order to theorise how an adaptation may develop a relationship with its source based on rhetoric, or style. I consider how Marleen Gorris' Mrs Dalloway (1997) adapts Woolfs literary impressionism through the use of the visual (editing and framing) as well as the aural, including the verbal (voice-over) and the non-verbal (the scored soundtrack). My analysis of The Hours, both Michael Cunningham's novel (1998) and Stephen Daldry's film (2002), examines how both texts develop a stylistic relationship with Woolfs novel through the presence of other W oolf intertexts such as her fiction (The Waves), her literary criticism ("Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown"), as well as her autobiographical writings. I address the diverse nature of intertextuality as I analyse alternative intertexts such as the cultural iconicity of Virginia W oolf and the figure of the hysteric. I consider how the merging of fiction, biography and cultural iconicity influences adaptation and its critical reception, promoting an on-going dialogue across the multiple texts present. The thesis found that a reclamation of the source novel and a return to fidelity produced a new means of conceiving of adaptation that incorporated both the source text and intertextuality which, through the web of intertextuality, presented an open, non-linear and potentially limitless way of reading adaptation. Introduction In 1926 Virginia Woolf wrote "The Cinema", an essay which examines "the art of cinema" and considers its ability to portray "life as it is when we have no part in it."1 This essay has been cited as an example of how logophilia has cor­ rupted the study of the film adaptation; however, such a stance has misappropri­ ated Woolfs writing and it is necessary to reinstate Woolfs enthusiasm for film. For Woolf, the burgeoning art-form is full of potential: "No fantasy could be too far-fetched or insubstantial;"2 and she believes that the new medium "has within its grasp innumerable symbols for emotions that have so far failed to find expression."3 She acknowledges that the cinema is still an immature art-form and is yet to master its tools, but it is the anticipation of something new that excites Woolf. Just as her earlier essays on fiction demanded that writers experiment with finding a new means of representation, as I shall explore in chapter two, W oolfs essay on the cinema is critical of an art-form whose potential remains unexplored and calls upon the filmmaker to embrace the unknown. W oolf argues that film-makers have failed to recognise cinema's potential and have, instead, turned to literature: All the famous novels of the world, with their well-known characters and their famous scenes, only asked, it seemed to be put on the films. What could be easier and simpler? The cinema fell upon its prey with immense rapacity, and to the moment largely subsists upon the body of its unfortunate victim. But the results are disastrous to both. The alliance is unnatural.4 It is this quotation has been employed by the adaptation critic to illustrate litera­ ture's bias against the film adaptation, as I discuss in chapter one, but what they fail to recognise is what Woolf is asking for. Kamilla Elliott, for instance, argues that Woolf privileges the word over the visual but she fails to consider Woolf's writing on film alongside her critique of fiction which makes similar demands of literature: in chapter two I examine in detail Woolf's essays "Modern Fiction" and "Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown" which call for writers of fiction to embrace experi­ mentation and devise a new means of representing life in fiction through a new, impression-driven literature. Woolf's critique of the cinema focuses upon an analysis of an adaptation which relies upon the material: "'Here is Anna Karen­ ina.' A voluptuous lady in black velvet wearing pearls ... 'Anna falls in love with Vronsky' — that is to say, the lady in black velvet falls into the arms of a gentle­ man in uniform and they kiss with enormous succulence, great deliberation, and infinite gesticulation, on a sofa in an extremely well-appointed library, while a gardener incidentally mows the lawn."5 A kiss in a well-appointed library may signify a couple in love but it does little to convey the experience of falling in love. Woolf is demanding more than a representation of what happened, she is demanding that the experience of what happened is represented. W oolf is not ar­ guing that this is all cinema is capable of but she is critical of the fact that this is all that film-makers seem to doing. Her critique is that the potential of cinema is not being explored and that, just as with the literature she targets in the aforemen­ tioned essays, it fails to move beyond the material and convey life as it is experi­ enced. For Woolf, the anticipation of cinema being able to achieve something that literature, and other art-forms, cannot is exciting: Is there ... some secret language which we feel and see, but never speak, and, if so, could this be made visible to the eye? Is there any characteristic which thought possesses that can be rendered visible without the help of words? It has speed and slowness; dartlike di­ rectness and vaporous circumlocution. But it has, also, especially in moments of emotion, the picture-making power, the need to lift its burden to another bearer; to let an image run side by side along with it. The likeness of the thought is for some reason more beauti­ ful, more comprehensible, more available, than the thought itself.6 Woolf is not denigrating the film adaptation, rather she is rejecting those that choose the "easier and simpler" options and demands more of the film-maker, just like she demands more of her fellow writers.