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Frame Narratives and Unresolved Contradictions in Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" Author(s): Kathleen Wall Source:

Journal of Narrative Theory, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 184-207 Published by: Journal of Narrative Theory Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30225727 . Accessed: 13/10/2011 11:21
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FrameNarrativesand Unresolved Contradictionsin Virginia Woolf's


A Roomof One'sOwn Kathleen Wall
But, a querulous critic might well ask, why do we not believe Virginia Woolf when she tells us she is writing fiction, that her "'I' is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being" (4)? Rather,readings of A Room of One's Own have tendedto view her claim that she is writing fiction as a clever ruse to disavow the essayist's [patriarchal] authority 148 and 172; Boehm 202), or as a means of constructing (Marcus Virginia Peneloa truly feminine textual space that allows a series of interruptive, in the argument,thus creatinga text "adaptedto the body" pean zig-zags and to the constant interruptions its work (Kamuf). Critics have tended of to see the fiction as affecting her rhetoric,not her argument,which they continue to view as coherent. Any contradictionsin the text have been viewed as a dialectic between content and form (Jones and Burt) rather than a dialogue between various narrativelevels and voices. Woolf herself attemptsto explainher resortto fiction in a complex maneuver designed to divest herself of authorityand its responsibilities:because, on the issue of women and fiction "I should never be able to come to a conclusion, I should never be able to fulfill what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer-to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truthto wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on

JNT. Journal of Narrative Theory 29.2 (Spring 1999): 184-207. Copyright c 1999 by JNT. Journal of Narrative Theory.

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the mantelpiece forever" (Room 3), she will eschew the non-fiction writer's task and approach.In spite of this comment on the elusiveness of truth,however, femininist critics have done precisely what she attempted to avoid: made it into a kind of feminist literaryicon, a beacon of truth. But Woolf's use of a double frame aroundher lectureon women and fiction, a double frame consisting of the words of her non-fiction narrator that open and close A Room of One's Own and the fictional narrativein Chapters 1, 2, and 6 that surroundwhat we might term a lecture on 'Women and Fiction,' problematizes such a monologic reading of her compelling text. Rather,she allows these layers of text to explore a series of questions that resonate between the layers, allowing her to leave them unresolved. of Woolf's fictional narrator Chapters1 and 2 constructs,accidentallyan argumentaboutthe way in which women have been disadon-purpose, vantaged throughtheir lack of access to educationand throughthe misogynistic attitudes that have been hostile to their achievements of suffrage in and their artisticaccomplishments.The narrator the "answering" frame, Chapter 6, eschews the material argumentaltogetherand instead argues for a pure Modernistaesthetic free from personalemotions. Here, she asserts that it is "fatal"to think of one's sex. Yet that was precisely what she spent her first two chaptersdoing. These three chaptersthus constitute a single textual layer, but by approachinga woman's relationshipto her art from two entirely different directions, the material and the aesthetic, Woolf leaves a whole series of questionsunresolved:What is the relationship between art and politics, between materialcircumstancesand aesthetics? She both assumes that the artist's life and her work can be disconnected and illustratesthat they cannot. Woolf develops a second dialogue between the fictional frame and the lecture on "Womenand Fiction" that comprises Chapters3, 4, and 5: in the frame,Woolf's fictional narrator discovers both her anger at Professor von X's misogyny and the sources of the professor's anger in women's threateningachievementof suffrage.Here, anger seems a source of illumination, of intriguing social commentary.In the kernel chapters,however, she criticizes those authorslike Lady Winchilsea, who allow their minds to be "harassedand distractedwith hates and grievances"(54). Charlotte Bronte* comes in for particularscorn for JaneEyre's complaintsof entrapment. In a second dialogue between these two textual layers, Woolf

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evinces uncertainty aboutthe relationship betweenlife and art:she obtoward serves with satisfaction womenhave "spent" that their"impulse "illumine [her] (72), autobiography" yet proposesthatMaryCarmichael between layersposesa seriesof the own soul"(81). Onceagain,dialogue unanswered doesangerhaveanyplacein art (it seemedto have questions: How does one go abouttrana purposein herfictional first chapter)? the "hates grievances" arean integral of one'slife? and that scending part If one's"soul" the appropriate is of it subject art,how doesone illuminate withoutalso exposingits wounds? The relationship betweena narrative frameandthe framed is altext an ambiguous one. On the one hand,becausethe frameis boththe ways for are firstandlastpointof contact the reader, becauseits strategies and of with the to establishboth the authority the text and the relationship reader or narratee,frame narrativespossess a kind of authoritative verisimilar psychological and weight.On the otherhand,theyareperipheral to the framednarrative, which is usually'the story,'andwhich,by is virtueof its length,position,and narrative interest, deemedto be the heart,the kernel,the core. Thustexts thatmakeuse of framenarratives can be used to questionwhatis marginal whatis central. and They can also be usedto set up orto suggestthepresence a dialogue remains of that textual unresolved becausethetwo voicesdo notshare space,exceptat the returns to or pointwhereframegiveswayto narrative, wherethenarrative manifestathe closingframe. framenarratives a structural Thus, represent betion of novelisticdiscourse, which"lives,as it were,on the boundary tweenits own contextandanother, aliencontext" 284), enacting (Bakhtin a "'heteroglossia,' voices expressing multipleideologies from multiple statusof differentstrataof language-in-use" 9). (Herndl The ambiguous framenarrative framed further and text the complicates dialogue, ensuring thatno voice dominates, The ambiguof its formal regardless placement. ous textualrelationship frameand framednarrative of does more than set up a new binary undoanold one;rather "renegotiate[s] it or the simply of question difference" Plessis 102). (Du Narrative frames a number functions, of usutypically perform limited us directions abouthowto readthetext . Theyassert narrathe ally giving or of tor's authority the authority the text, as in Defoe'sMoll Flanders, so wherethe 'editor'admitsto havingshaped 'autobiography' thatits the moralpurpose clearto thereader. is establish worldthe Occasionally they

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most for and view of the narrator suggesta Weltanschauung productive whichencloseFrankenstein, introthe text'sreception, Walton's as letters, duce us to nineteenth-century anxietiesaboutand faith in scientificdisthe of and covery.Theyforeground difficulties interpreting tellingstories, the as in Wuthering Heights where they problematize readingof the framedtext. They establishcontactbetweenthe narrator the ideal and readeror the narratee; framenarrative Tenant Wildfell the of Hall, for of seeks to construct for andin advanceof Helen'sunexample, sympathy rebellious behavior. historical soor conventionally They give temporal, All cial context,as in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. these varioustasks have a singlethingin common: theyforgean alwaysintensebutproblematic connection betweenthe world externalto the work of art and the worldevokedwithinthatwork.Likethe framesof Derrida's essay,"The aboutwhatis integral whatis suppleand Parergon," pose questions they mentalto the workof art,becausetheymakeexplicitthe contact between the writeror tellerandthe reader listener. or As such,the framenarrative, Woolf'suse of it to createa dialogue and aboutthe relationship aesthetics material of to is conditions, an embodimentof the polyphony manyAnglo-American that criticsidentifyas central to women'stexts. In 1979, Gilbertand Gubarargued thatwomen's subtext angerandfrusof texts werepalimpsests, witha partially-effaced thatwomenbelongto a tration.Elaine Showalter, (1985) has suggested mutedgroup,mento a dominant Thismodelof "thecultural situagroup. tion of women" be translated a discussion to (261), Showalter argued, may of women's literary existence and voice, given that the expression refers to "problemsboth of languageand of power"(262). "muted" mustwritethrough "screens the dominant of the culWomen,she argued, ture"in orderfor theirvoices to be heardand attended But she also to. maintainsthat it is possible to uncoverthe theoretical "wild"zone of women'sdiscourse, "women's that discourse' writingis a 'double-voiced thatalwaysembodies social,literary, cultural the and of heritage boththe mutedandthedominant" Susan Lanser, the in (263).Finally, narratologist of of the text of "FemaleIngenuity," observesthe interaction analysis threelayersof narrative, illustrating capacityof narrative the structhus turesto expresswhat cannotbe literallysaid, implyingthatthe layered narrative for possessesan inherent capacity polyphony.1

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envisioned fluid,contraa TheFrench feminist theorists havesimilarly dictory, multi-layereddiscourse that might well be seen to theorize
Woolf's practice in A Room of One 's Own. The "two lips" of Irigaray's

"disconcert "ThisSex WhichIs Not One"inevitably fidelityto a single Our discourse" (354). Onthe otherhand,in "When LipsSpeakTogether," on an essay thatattempts manylevels to explorethe way in which lan"triesto createa locus in guage divides wholes into fractions, Irigaray
writing where ...'opposites' may coexist, in a new way" (see note, 70) just

that views of the as Woolfcreatelevels of narration present contradictory betweenpoliticsand art, genderand transcendence. H6l6ne relationship envisionsa language overthat Cixous,in "TheLaughof the Medusa," the discourse flows (335), andthatsurpasses (340). Equating body with Cixousdescribes impact femalebodyhason the the thetextin her"sexts," "A woman'sbody, with its thousandand one thresholds of language: andcensors, lets it articulate proshe the ardor-once, by smashing yokes that it fusionof meanings runthrough in everydirection-will makethe with more than one lanold single-grooved mothertonguereverberate is guage"(342). The objectof thatsmashing the "systemof couplesand that 344), the "oppositions orderculture" ("Castraopposition" ("Laugh" tion"44), oppositions Woolfdeconstructs that her refusalto dethrough clare eithervalid. Finally,Kristeva coterminous posits a social contract withthe symboliccontract; one deconstructing deconstructing necessitates the other ("Women's Time"451). Woman'sonly recourse,then, is to "break code,to shatter the Time"452), to "nourish ("Women's language" our societieswith a moreflexibleandfree discourse" Time" ("Women's Sucha rebellion as its goal not merelythe liberation women has of 457). as a group,butan articulation "thesingularity eachwoman,andbeof of her Time" yondthis,hermultiplicities, plural ("Women's languages" 458). of theseindividual theorists' to Lacan, eachenviRegardless relationships a that sions, consciouslyor unconsciously, feminist project rebelsagainst the phallictranscendental for each of them the deconstructive signifier; resultsin lettingloosethe kindsof pluralities coexthat projectinevitably ist in Woolf'stext. In spiteof Woolf'spretence givingherlecture of overto fiction,thearone. to a tive, is a tightlyconstructed Thefirsttwo chapters appear contain
gument of A Room of One 's Own, presentedthough it is througha narra-

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and Theseaccidentsincludethe narraseries of "accidents" frustrations. lawnor enterthe lithat tor's forgetting she cannotwalkon the Oxbridge the betweenthe mealseatenin the brarywithoutan introduction; contrast men'sandwomen'scolleges(whichit is apparent Woolfexaggerated); the whichdraws attention a Manxcat;thepresence her absenceof anashtry to of a volumeof poetrythatallowsher to explainthe post-war changein hermomentarily thatmothers werenotpowdering conversation; forgetting theirnoses whenuniversities wereformed, hadno economicfreedom but Women's Act untilthe passageof the Married Property in 1882;andthe that happensto be left at the table where she patriarchal newspaper at lunchesafterher struggle the BritishMuseum. These"accidents" conthe of thatis "discovered" struct appearance an inductive rather argument thanconstructed, argument an to designed revealthe rangeof exclusions, and resources havekeptwomenunthat prohibitions, the lackof financial educatedand thus under-represented writerswhile readingincisively as the biasesof powerful men.2 Thisaccident-strewn narrative 1 3, comprises Chapters and2. Chapters and5 presenta literary of women.Here,withthe exceptionof 4, history her fictionalnarrative aboutJudithShakespeare MaryCarmichael and becauseso little is knownaboutwomenof the pastand (madenecessary becausethe futureof the novel has not yet arrived), use of fictionis her limitedto herreminding thatshe is movingalonga seriesof us frequently bookshelves. Thosemiddlechapters, 4, and 3, chronologically-organized 5 mightbe saidto constitute kernelof the lecture; the indeedthey rather conformto Woolf's description her first paragraph in aboutwhat she heraudience expect.Themoreengaging to narrative returns with imagines in whichWoolfconsiders two individuals the the taxi 6, Chapter entering andherhypotheses aboutthe andrygony the mind.The morestrongly of narrative a one, chapters, two, andsix, provide kindof second,interpretive framefor the middle chaptersof literary history.Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, EmilyBronte'sWuthering Heights,andAnneBronte'sThe Tenant Wildfell is Woolf'snarrative triplylayeredandconHall, then, of structs private a textualspace-is the reader a or attending lecture reading fiction?In any case, thereareno menpresent pages74 and78)-for (see women'sconcerns the publicdebate.3 into inserting the 1 Chapters and2, in whichWoolfchanges wordsat the top of her fresh page from "Womenand Fiction"to "Womenand Poverty"(see

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pages 23 and 26), explore the materialand social circumstancesof a fictional characterwho happensto be researchinga problemsimilarto thatof the non-fiction narratorand who, in the context of doing this research is frequently confrontedby her own experience of social and economic inequalities or, for that matter,who can appreciatethe virtues of her economic freedom. In Chapter 6, the heading on her page changes from "Womenand Poverty"and returnsus to the problemof "Womenand Fiction" (see page 94), and attempts, on its own, to disentangle social and economic inequalities from aesthetic issues. But echoes with the first two chapters,like the shifting title of her projector the figure of the crumpled skin of the day throwninto the hedge (see pages 22 and 99), as well as the way in which these chapters together function to frame the narrativeof women's literaryhistory, create a dialogue, even an argumentif you will, regardingone's ability to separatethe materialand the aesthetic. In short, the inner, fictional frame teaches us to read the literaryhistory of A Room and materiallimitations of of One's Own throughthe shared frustrations Woolf and her female contemporaries,and establishes a dialogue that argues about the relationshipbetween art and life, about the limitations of into the unipersonal experience and the way in which that is transmuted versals of art, about anger and the free incandescentmind, about the relationship and the disjunctionbetween aesthetics and politics. We find here what Rachel Blau DuPlessis calls a '"feminine'practiceof otherness... a practice [of] stirringup difference and underminingclosure"(100). Thus, Woolf's nested structureperforms two of the classic functions of frame narrative:it introduces ambiguity by placing contradictionsin different textual layers and spaces, and articulatesthe fictional text's problematic relationshipto the real, materialworld outside A Room of One 's Own, a problematicrelationshipthat echoes that between art and life. Contradictionsin her method might well suggest that there are also contradictions in her matter. Indeed, attention to the text's many selfcontradictionsmight pose yet anotherseries of questions:Why does she set one of her most vehement proscriptions,that anger is entirely out of place in fiction, in the midst of a fictional narrativethat recountsthe narrator's justifiable and illuminatinganger at Professor von X? Why does she cross over to her writing-tableto write her first sentence, which is not the first sentence of the text we are given, and record:"it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex" when that is precisely what she has

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been doing (94) and when she encourages us to think back through our motherswhen we write?4Wereshe doing it in an essay, we might view her not prescriptionsand proscriptionsas appropriate, in aesthetic bad taste. But she takes such pains to continuallyremindus that we are reading fiction, that these opinions about what should and should not be included in In a literarywork can only be seen as self-contradictory. orderto answer such questions, "one would have to decide what is style and what is meaning, a question which-" (7) ends in anotherof Woolf's frequentinterruptions of her trainof thought,perhapsbecause, though one raises important questions one may not be able to answerthem definitively.Apply logic to this text, and many of its most importantaesthetic points-about the appropriateness of anger, of discussion of gender inequalities, and of polemic in general in literature-deconstruct underthe weight of its preView it as a playful, novelisscriptions,proscriptions,and contradictions. tic dialogue of discourses, attend to its narrativeform, and one is much closer to graspingWoolf's purpose. Consequently,I would arguethat the primarypurposeof Woolf's doubly framed,fictionalized essay is to effect a balanced,unresolveddialogue between the contradictionsinherentin her text and her task. ForA Room of One's Own attempts material as well as aesthetic arguments:it asks not only for a room and an income but wonders what aesthetics might arise out of the freedom so gained. It takes the moderniststance on the mutually exclusive status of politics-embodied by self-conscious thoughts about one's gender and by anger at the way gender has limited one-and artwhich ought to partakeof "'indifference,''disinterestedness,' 'impersonality"' (Marcus "No More Horses" 152)-while acknowledgingtheir interdependence. It allows her to make use of and explain her anger while questioningthe effect of anger,or of any special pleading, on the aesthetic object. It allows her to pursuetruthwhile affirmingits problematicstatus. Woolf provides us with a metafictionalkey to her text the firsttime she mentions this issue of truth.Withinher first paragraph, Woolf admitsthat, concerningWomen and Fiction, "I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, first duty the of a lecturer-to hand you after an hour's discoursea nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever" (3). It is not only her literal admissionthat she can not arrive at truththat is of interesthere;the very figures of speech she uses give

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one pause: can one wrap a nugget up between the pages of notebooks? If so, it must be a pretty insignificantnugget. And if it is that small, do we want to keep it on the mantelpiece,or is the cleaning person likely to mistake it for something that should be thrown out? Thus she suggests, here and elsewhere, that the problem is not simply that she cannot deliver the truth,but that the natureof truthitself is problematic,and calls for a different set of strategies. Woolf keeps this problem with truthwell in view, and remindsus of it several times: in her narrator'sfirst search for truth, for example, she misses the turningup to Fernham.And instead of the destinationand closure she expects, she finds herself faced with an epistemologicalproblem: What was the truthabout these houses, for example, dim and festive now with their red windows in the dusk, but raw and red and squalid, with their sweets and their bootlaces, at nine o'clock in the morning? And the willows and the river and the gardens that run down to the river,vague now with the mist stealing over them, but gold and red in the sunlightwhich was the truth, which was the illusion about them? (14) If this narrator view truthas problematic,how can she also gamely set can off the next morningto search for truthin the British Museum,remarking that it is her task to "strainoff what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth" (23). Even the diction with which she describesher task raises questions: does she really expect us to believe that the "truth" about women can be expressed by "men who have no apparentqualificationsave that they are not women" (24)? Do we really want the kind of truththat can be shepherded into a pen (25)? This problematizingof truthexplains to some deit gree Woolf's use of a fictional narrator: makes possible a slightly ironic attitudetowardthe quest for truthas well as an admissionthat the quest is importanteven if it is destinedto be frustrated.5 Bakhtin's notion, that the voice of the implied authorcan be heard in the text, commentingupon and critiquingthe insights and attitudesof the narrator,serves to highlight one of the effects of Woolf's non-fiction

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betweeneventhe mostauthorframe.Whilewe mightmakea distinction we ial fictionalnarrator the impliedauthor, do not usuallytalkabout and the the narrator an essay.6Consequently, non-fiction of frame,whichinin the of cludesthe impliedauthor the text,highlights presence Woolfand of in hercritique hernarrator thetext.Butthe relationship betweenWoolf is and her narrator an uneasyone. On some occasions,the fictionaland on framenarrators seemsto agreeaboutthe problems arriving truth; of at otheroccasions,the fictionalnarrator seemsto undertake searchanythe As such we mighttermher an improbable narrator. using the way. By I but word'improbable,'meantto suggestthatshe is not quiteunreliable, to and thatshe strikes as constructed Woolfprecisely be credulous a us by littlenaiveas she searches truthandmissesherturning, renewsher for or searchfor truthin the BritishMuseum the morrow, on particularly given has thatthe impliedauthor already statedin the framethattruthis probor indicated either the conlematic. Thatcredulity naiveteis frequently by between trastbetweenheractionsandherdiction,or by the contradiction of her searchfor answers herachievement them. and JohnStuart Mill is the firsttangible evidenceof her Herslip regarding the extentto whichshe appears of unaware prerevealing improbability, she at or tendingto ignorance naivete-a strategy repeats the BritishMuseum.MarySeton,underthe narrator's instructions Marypresumes (for that the narrator to alreadyknows the story)tells of the attempts raise Mill to moneyin the 1860's,and of the women'sreferences JohnStuart for guidance. the two Marys"burst in scornat the repout Moments later, rehensible beendoingthenthat povertyof oursex. Whathadourmothers their in theyhadno wealthto leaveus?Powdering noses?Looking at shop windows?Flaunting the sun at MonteCarlo?" in JohnStuart Mill (19). couldhavetold the Marysquiteclearly-and did so in his description of women'slegal andeconomicrights(or lackthereof)in OntheSubjection had of of Women-whyMary'smother no moneyto give to the founding Girton the the College.Andindeed,as theyponder lackof amenities, narrator revealsthatshe has, all along,knownprecisely why: because,in the firstplace,to earnmoneywas impossible forthem,andin the second,hadit beenpossible, the law deniedthemthe rightto possesswhatmoney they earned.It is only for the last forty-eight years

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of [note the narrator's precisecalculation how long Women's Lawwas enacted] the Married Property ago thatMrsSetonhashada pennyof herown. ... Every pennyI earn,they mayhavesaid,will be takenfrom wisme and disposedof according my husband's to or to founda scholarship to endowa dom-perhaps fellowshipin Balliolor King's,so thatto earnmoney, even if I couldearnmoney,is not a matter interthat I ests me very greatly. hadbetterleave it to my husband.(20) shiftfromhercriticalandunsympathetic Note the narrator's improbable scorn to her sympathetic adoptionof Mrs. Seton's voice and the constructionof a diction and syntaxthat expressesMrs. Seton'sresigned is helplessness. Her improbability thus a rhetoricaldevice that contributesto our sense that she pursuesa discoveredratherthan conto structed and argument, it contributes the lightertone of the otherwise is to persuade thatthe narrator not a knowus polemicalessay,helping it-all. But her improbability achievesmorethanthis: it keepsbeforeus the was simplyone thing"(To the Lighthouse fact that "nothing 186). The contradictions betweenherown attitudes well as thosebetweenheracas and authoritative nartions,beliefs,or discoveries thoseof thenon-fiction, ratorfurther contribute oursensethatthesetwo personae in a unito live verse of contradiction,one in which there are multiple, and often truths. as "thebeautyof the worldwhichis so soon to Just contradictory one perish,has two edges, one of laughter, of anguish,cuttingthe heart asunder" so too does the "crumpled of the day"contain arskin "its (15), and gumentsand impressions its angerand its laughter" (22), and so is civilizedlife madepossibleby "violentandheroicaction" (32)-largely, one suspectsbecause"Thehuman framebeingwhatit is, heart, bodyand brain [are] all mixed together,and not containedin separate compartments"(16), andthereareeven "severances oppositions the mind" and in Woolfcreates herea Weltenschau(87). As she does in TotheLighthouse, of contradiction. ung The essay'smostsignificant conflictsconcern relation the betweenthe aesthetic the political,betweenWoolf'sdesirethatartists thinkof and not

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their sex when they createandthe fact thatthey invariably between do, her wish to keep angeraway fromart so thatthe artistcan contemplate that "thethingitself,"andherrecognition "thethingitself' mayindeedbe it conflictsoccurwithinthe largerstructure: is in the three anger.These is the kernelchapters Woolf'snarrator mostdecidedabout need that inner, to keepangerandpoliticsout of art,while in the narrative framing chapcircumstances the writer of ters (one andtwo) Woolfrevealsthe material of 6 thatpreclude avoidance politicsandanger, evenwhile,in Chapter she modernist to pleadfor the aesthetics of returns the dominant to ideology mind. the free,incandescent the Woolf'smostseriousandemphatic of argument against distortions in Chapter in hercritique Charlotte of Bronte's 4, angerappears depiction on nineteenth-century of JaneEyre'sprotestagainstthe restraints placed women:7 Onemightsay,I continued, layingthebookdownbeside Pride andPrejudice, the womanwho wrote that thosepageshadmoregeniusin herthanJaneAusten; but if one readsthem over and marksthatjerk in one them,thatindignation, sees thatshewill neverget hergeniusexpressed wholeandentire. bookswill Her be deformedand twisted. She will write in a rage where she shouldwrite calmly.She will write foolishly whereshe shouldwritewisely.Shewill writeof herselfwhereshe shouldwriteof hercharacters. She is at war with her lot. How could she help but die and young,cramped thwarted? (63) Central this narrator's to vision of fully-expressed is creativity freedom fromangerandfromspecialpleading,andthe possessionof an integrity that has not been pulled fromthe straight extraneous concerns.She by and circumstances the makingof art. wants,in short,to divorcematerial Yet the fictionalframeof A Roomof One'sOwnquestions both the and 2 As possibility the successof suchan aesthetic. she sits in Chapter in the BritishMuseum, Professor X's workon TheMental, von considering Moral,andPhysicalInferiority theFemaleSex,she findsherselfdrawof ing his portrait:

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I in But while I pondered hadunconsciously, my in my desperation, been drawing pica listlessness, ture where I should,like my neighbour, have been I a writinga conclusion. hadbeendrawing face,a figure.It was the faceandthe figureof Professor X. von workentitled The his engagedin writing monumental
Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiorityof the Female

to Sex. He was not in my picturea man attractive women.He was heavilybuilt;he hada great jowl; to balancethathe hadvery smalleyes; he was very red in the face. His expressionsuggestedthat he was undersome emotionthatmadehimjab his labouring pen on the paperas if he were killingsome noxious insectas he wrote,butevenwhenhe hadkilledit that did not satisfyhim;he mustgo on killingit; andeven remained. so, somecauseforangerandirritation (28) This unconsciousand creativeendeavour revealedan important has betweenthe sexes: that fact in Woolf's social analysisof the relations after feel men,particularly the successful suffrage campaign, theirsuperithe is "aprotest threatened; professor's ority anger againstsomeinfringehe mentof his powerto believein himself' (32). To effecthis superiority, has insistedangrilyon the inferiority women.But it has also revealed of the narrator's justifiable angerat beingso used.What,one mightwell ask, of is the difference betweenthisfictionalnarrator's recognition heranger at theprofessor JaneEyre'sprotest and the placedupon against limitations herlife? title Thusthe angerof Woolf'snarrator she ponders professor's as the is illuminating. theworkof theprofessors, has Like Woolf'sdrawing been created"in the red light of emotionand not in the white light of truth" narrator the and as between non-fiction the (30). Buttruth, the consonance innerframenarrator is and emphasizes, problematic, the redlightof emotion revealsthingsnot seen in otherlights.And, as if to justifyboththe in morepurelyaesthetic, will draw she angerandits conclusions a context theseobservations about wayin whichthreatened the upon egotismaffects 6 in and Chapter as she thought expression themoreaesthetically-oriented of critiquesthe self-absorption the young, successfulmale writerwho seems to block out the worldwith his assertion "I-I-I-I." of Woolf'sun-

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her in usualnarrative structure undercuts proscription two ways:first, thus that by usinga fictionalframe setstheproscription against angerin literawithina fiction,and,second,by constructing unresolved unrean ture and solvabledialoguebetweenthe innerframenarrative the kernelchapand and a tersthatattempt establish evaluate tradition women'swriting. to of It is as if she cannotresolvethe conflictbetweenherhighmodernist aeshere.Heraesthetics theticsandherown politicalagenda require loyaltyto the workof art disconnected frompoliticsand self-interest any kind, of anda focuson "thethingitself."Herthoughts about limitations the placed on the womenwriterin her effortto achievethataesthetic successassert as and thatangerfunctions a powerful necessary socialcritique. Woolf'ssecondproscription concerns one's genderat all. considering In Chapter with its focus on aesthetics rather thanon material condi6, on crossesthe roomto writeherveryfirstsentence tions,Woolf'snarrator the page headed"Women Fiction:" is fatalfor anyonewho writes and "it to thinkof theirsex"(94).Yetif thiswereindeedherfirstsentence, would it not have appeared the pagethatshe sets up earlier on headed"Women andFiction"? wouldit not havebeenthe firstsentence the finished Or of Genette termssucha transgression metalepsis a work?8 (234), andpoints of out thatsuchmoments dissonance betweennarration text drawatand tentionto the constructedness the text. Thusthe prescription of against with the cachetof beinga kindof first thinkingof one's sex is provided evenwhilethe anomaly-nowhere it a firstsentence-puzzles is principle us. Othercommentators written Woolf'sideasaboutthe androghave on idealisticunity is yny of the creativemind,in whicha pecular, perhaps achievedandthe resulting creative workbecomesrichlysuggestive.9 The to her lack of completecertainty aboutthe metalepsis,however,points out efforts. possibilityof leavingone's gender of one'screative Butwhilethis androgyny indeedbe Woolf's-not simplyhernarmay rator's-idealisticvision,it is undercut an ambiguity aboutthe role of by the individual's andthe valueof individualistic life in expression themakof a workof art.If the individual his orherexperience to be exand is ing fromthe workof art,leavingspecialpleadingaside is a simple punged matter. But if the individual's in contributes any way to the experience workat hand,how is the artist decidewhichaspects one'sexperience of to contribute and which marthe creativeendeavour? to Whatis personal, what political?At the beginningof Chapter Woolf sees promisein 5,

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women's writing:"The impulsetowardautobiography may be spent. She may be beginning use writingas an art,not as a methodof selfto Nine pageslater,she is exhorting to (72). expression" MaryCarmichael illumineyour own soul with its profundities its and and shallows,andits vanitiesandits generosities, say whatyourbeauty meansto you or yourplainness, and whatis yourrelation the ever-changing turning and to worldof gloves andshoesandstuffsswayingup and down among the faint scents that come through chemists' bottlesdownarcades dressmaterial of over a floorof pseudo-marble. (81) Thatshop into whichWoolfhas imaginatively stepped, mightwell seem like one of the "real" visionsshe offersus-of an October in London, day of thosehouseson the way to Fernham, theriverandits willows-and of thus free from concernsaboutgender.Thatshop might simplybe "the sent thingitself."Yet she has not, in her imagination, Maryinto a bookIf butinto a placewherewomen'sclothesandscentspermeate. one store, is illuminating one'sown soul,how muchof life, this imageseemsto ask, can be disconnectedfrom gender?Were I Woolf's narrator Three in I'd like to lay, not two letters,but two morepassages,side by Guineas, side here-for the same confusionseems to color Woolf'sdepictionof aboutthe relationship betweenherartandher Lily Briscoe'sobservations life in TotheLighthouse. "TheWindow," takesup herpaintbrush In Lily with dim eyes andthe absent-minded subdumanner, ing all her impressionsas a womanto something much more general; becomingonce moreunderthe of thatvision whichshe hadseen clearlyonce power and must now grope for amonghedges and houses andmothers children-herpicture. was a quesand It how tion, she remembered, to connectthis mass on the righthandwiththaton the left.(53) is and Here,the formal,aesthetic problem foregrounded gendersubdued. Yetin this sectionof thenovel,the formal remains. achieves problem Lily a theoretical solutionto it at dinner while she is givingsuccorto Charles

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Tansley,but it is not until ten years laterthat she can act out that solution and have her vision. Curiously,at the point in "TheLighthouse"where the practical,tangible solution to her aestheticproblembecomes possible, the disconnection between self and art, between "the thing itself' and gender is less absolute: Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personalityand her appearance, and whether Mr. Carmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurtingover that glaring, hideously difficult white space, while she modelled it with greens and blues. CharlesTansleyused to say that, she remembered, women can't paint, can't write. (159) While those "outerthings" that are a distractionfrom, if not a hindrance to, the work of art disappearmomentarily,it is not long before they reassert themselves in her memories of CharlesTansley.If the creative flow is characterizedby memories and ideas spurtingup from the depths, how is one to suppress the memories of slights or wrongs? Which memories contributeto the work of art and which seem to distract?Why does her more disconnected moment produce no aesthetic solution in "The Window," while her less disinterested moment, in which she is aware of CharlesTansley's slights, yields her vision? In both To the Lighthouseand Room of One's Own, Woolf engages, as many aestheticians and theorists before and after her have done, in the question of whether or not the "political"can be distinguishedfrom the personal, of whether one's experience of self in the world can be entirely private-or entirely universal-and whetherthat experience can be unaffected by ideology or by such social constructionsas gender.In Chapter6, the fictional frame, she seems to come down on the side of the apolitical, androgynous artist. Yet her nonfictional authoritativenarratorquestions that possibility by returningonce again to the issue of material circumstances, as does Woolf herself by changing her title from "Women and

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can Fiction" A Roomof One's Own.Finally, non-fictional to the narrator offerone uncontradictory of advice:"[I]tis muchmoreimporonly piece tantto be oneselfthananything else. Do not dreamof influencing other I would say, if I knew how to makeit soundexalted.Thinkof people, toattitude (100). She can only arguefor a certain thingsin themselves" thanmaterial its treatment. wardtoneandintention rather or As if the conflictsbetweenof artandpolitics,genderanduniversality, angerand "thething itself' weren'tcomplicated enough,Woolfinin volves her narratee the readingprocessby directing to be critical her Woolf's infamousfirst almost to the point of being querulous. Indeed, an sentenceconstructs immediately involved,criticalpresence.She goes needsto be complemented on to suggestthatthe taskshe hasundertaken the experiences attitudes heraudiences. and of is Thus,herstrategy to by "give one's audiencethe chanceof drawingtheir own conclusionsas the of they observe the limitations,the prejudices, idiosyncrasies the In her final non-fictionframe,she againassertsthe active (4). speaker" while her fictionalnarrator been layhas of participation her audience: her thoughtsbare,"youno doubthave been observingher failings ing and foibles anddecidingwhateffectthey havehadon heropinions.You her additions deducand have been contradicting andmakingwhatever tions seem good to you. Thatis all as it shouldbe"(95). This"triologue" thatJaneMarcusidentifies(Virginia145) is thusa quadrilogue, involvnarframe;her improbable ing Woolfherselfin the outer,non-fictional between rator,whose attemptsto work out the complex relationships of politicsandaestheticsare compromised the problems ascertaining by of truth,and who cannotreconcilethe materialcircumstances literary and modernist her literary historianof the inner aesthetics; production and all chapters; hernarratee, of whomassertslightlydifferent opinions of is upon the centralproblematic the text. The narratee centralto her unfinished that project,however;not only does Woolfpropose the narratee help to bringaboutJudithShakespeare's but rebirth, thatshe undertake a varietyof academictasks.In addition, unreconciled the structure of the workdemands, even whenWoolf'snarrator overtlydoingso, isn't the narratee's activeinvolvement. In spite of their consensusupon the polyvocalityof women'stexts, feministtheorists whentheyattempt deto invariably into difficulties get

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fine "women'swriting." First,thereis the inevitable difficultyof distinguishingthe writingof womenfromfemininewritingand fromfeminist alto writing" writing.Second,thereis the temptation define"women's moreserious to of ways in reference the writing men.Thereis theperhaps whileavoiding pitfallsof being the women'swriting of defining difficulty and ideologyhas too often prescriptive, thus limiting-as the dominant to done-what womenfeel it is legitimate say anddo. An examplefrom she of Cixousmightwell suffice:In "Laugh the Medusa," assertsthat"It of to definea femininepractice writing,andthis is an imis impossible can enpossibilitythatwill remain,for this practice neverbe theorized, coded-which doesn'tmeanthatit doesn'texist.Butit will always closed, the the that (340).Yetas system" surpass discourse regulates phallocentric she observes "Shewritesin that women'screative she describes resources, of white ink" (339). The very poetic strategies this text, its associative and illustrate Cixous'effort its structure, relianceon metaphor metonymy, on fromwhichto meditate thewritto findherselfa non-logocentric space revealsthe extentto which,in spiteof ing of women.But thatmetaphor she her effortnot to definea woman'swriting practice, falls intothe trap and of doing so, and into an essentialist phallocentric at that.For if trap con"shewritesin whiteink"she is tied to her sociallyandbiologically ink on whitepaperis invisiwhite structed moreover, identityas mother; also reveals the most ble, and thus silent. Cixous' self-contradiction the for feminist theorists: does one negotiate Scylla how treacherous traps of on andCharybdis essentialism's emphasis biologyandpost-structuraland ism's assumption subjectivity, thus gender,is entirelyinterpelthat lated? both LindaAlcoff's attempt workoutthe identity to crisisin feminism the a framework feminism illuminates for and constructs viabletheoretical Alcoff proposesthat we see end result of Woolf's narrative strategies. womanas a "position" which she has a role in definingandfromwhich determined either she may depart, rather thanas a clusterof qualities by womanas biologicalor socialforces.Alcoff sees part of the historicized,fluid movement,and she to thereforeactively contributes the contextwithin ... whichherpositioncanbe delineated. Theconcept how women use of woman as positionalityshows

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theirpositional as perspective a placefromwhichvalues are interpreted constructed and rather thanas a locus of an already determined of values.(434) set Woolf's narrative rather thaneffectingpronouncements strategies, upon the relationship betweenwomenandfiction,artandlife, havethe effect of "tryingout"positionsto see whatthey revealaboutthe multifaceted Whileone voice exploresthe pastby playingthe literary histoproblem. the impactthatmaterial circumstances have upon rian,another analyses women's opportunities write and be read, and upon to contemporary their aesthetics. thirdvoice attempts disconnect A to aestheticsandmaterial circumstancesby adoptingthe aesthetics of high modernism. both questionsthe pursuitof truth Meanwhile,Woolf's framenarrator andestablishesa contextfor thesevarieties truth reactwith one anof to other.Sincethesepositionsareneverresolved,sinceno voice or attitude to dominates,and since the work closes with an appealto the narratee to the bringJudithShakespeare herbirth,Woolfasksus to continue task of exploration.
Universityof Regina Saskatchewan,Canada

Notes
I. See Lanser's "Towarda Feminist Narratology"in Feminisms and Fictions ofAuthority. Lanserdescribes her work as a feminist 'sociological poetics,' afterBakhtin'sconand cept, and observes "thatboth narrativestructures women's writingare determined not by essential propertiesor isolated aestheticimperativesbut by complex and changing conventions that are themselves producedin and by the relationsof power that implicate writer, reader,and text" (5). See also, in this respect, Bauer and McKinstry's anthology,Feminism,Bakhtin,and the Dialogic. Peggy Kamuf reads this portion of the text as a "zig-zag, a repeatedreversalof direction" which is "producedby a reversalof sense ... coordinatedwith the contradiction of fiction by history"(8). Each of these nineteenth-century texts places at the centre of their Chinese boxes the problematic desires of a woman; in each case, the outermost 'box' creates a private

2.

3.

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context-Walton's letters, Nelly Dean's story related to the convalescing Lockwood, Markham'sletter to his brother-in-law-for relating the narrativethat illustratesthese desires. The device is designed, I am arguing,to insertwomen, who occupy the private sphere, into the public debate about mores and values that was, until recently, limited to men. Woolf uses this device again in ThreeGuineas, where she addressesthe issue of 'how to prevent war' in a lengthy letterto a friend,and inserts into this letter public documents that illustrateher point of view. 4. GrahamGood has similarly caught VirginiaWoolf contradictingherself in her essays, though he doesn't discuss A Room of One's Own. See his The ObservingSelf. Rediscovering the Essay. Considerin this light the complicationsthat arise when you attemptto explain to firstyear studentsthe difference between the fact that there are no definitive readings of a text and theirbelief thatthereforeno readingsare wrong. JohnBurtsimilarlyviews the dissonances in A Room of One's Own to be purposeful, and comments "Perhapsour mistake is to assume that fonnrm contentmust be consonantwith each other,when in and fact their dissonance may reflect those contradictionsthat artists,like everybody else, must, and yet cannot ever, resolve" (889). The notion of an 'authorialnarrator'is Susan Lanser's. She notes that authoritative and first-personnarrators encourageus to (mistakenly)conflate the narrator the author because it "(re)producesthe structural and functionalsituationof authorship.In other words, where a distinction between the (implied) authorand a public, heterodiegetic narrator not textually marked,readersare invited to equate the narrator is with the author and the narrateewith themselves (or their historical equivalents). I use Lanser's term because I think it precisely describes the conventions that are operatingin this reading situation. It is of some significance thatWoolf's reactionsto CharlotteBronteare, Michelle Barret observes, exaggerated,as "required her argument.Elsewhere she was far more by generous. Likening Charlotte Bronte to Thomas Hardy, she said that they had both 'forged for themselves a prose which takes the mould of theirminds entire;which has, into the bargain,a beauty,a power, a swiftness of its own."' See Michelle Barret'snote to A Room of One 's Own on page 110 of the Penguin edition; see also Woolf's essay "Jane Eyre" in The Common Reader. I've always been fascinated by the fact that Woolf herself conflates Jane Eyre and CharlotteBronte. It is Jane who is angry, not be Bronte;might not Jane's frustration "the thing itself' as Bronte observes it? Is this Woolf's Freudianslip? Admittedly,Woolf didn't have Seymour Chatmanto instruct her on the distinction between the implied authorand the narrator. the same, her All

5.

6.

7.

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conflation of authorand narrator, particularly given the self-consciousness of her own naris curious. ration, 8. There is a similar temporal aporia in which the chronology of discovery and the chronology of the text are at odds at the beginningof the text. Woolf, talkingaboutthe shape and direction of the text as a little fish presumesthat the readerwill figure out what that little idea is. In the chronologyof the text, she laterloses the idea. When did she recover it so that she could suggest, when she is later writing her record of her process of discovery, that we might find it? Woolf uses the phrase "the thing itself' in a numberof contexts. Most frequently, In it refers to an appropriate object of aesthetic contemplationor representation. Moments of Being, however, she refers to an intense connection between a moment of being (as opposed to a moment of non-being), its aestheticexpression,and something one might call our humanity: And so I go on to suppose that the shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer.I hazardthe explanationthata shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it. I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of and some real thing behind appearances; I make it real by putting it into words. ...Perhaps this is the strongest pleasureknown to me. It is the raptureI get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what;making a scene come right;making a character come together.From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constantidea of mine; thatbehindthe cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we-I mean all human beings-are connected with this; that the 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;certainlyand emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself. (72) 9. See particularlyCarolyn Heilbrun's"Woolf and Androgyny"as excerpted in Critical a Essays on VirginiaWoolf(73-84) or in Toward RecognitionofAndrogynyand Ellen Carol Jones's "Androgynous Vision andArtisticProcess in VirginiaWoolf's a Roomof One's Own,"also in Critical Essays (227-239).

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