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Jul. 14th, 2008 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThroughout my many years of schooling, I have somehow escaped ever being told to read a book by Virgina Woolf. However, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire gave me a Summer Reading Assignment to read Woolf and report back, so! To the Lighthouse:
I found myself kind of flipping between two modes when reading the book. In Mode One, I was completely in-sync with the stream-of-consciousness writing and thinking, yes, Virginia Woolf, you truly are a genius at capturing the inner workings of the human mind! In Mode Two, the consciousness in the book was decidedly Not My Consciousness, and I was twiddling my thumbs and going, yes, Virginia Woolf, this is very interesting and experimental but perhaps we should move on. I am not sure whether the parts where I was closer and the parts where I were more distanced were a function of the book itself, or of my mindset while reading - it was often hard not to think about the Myth of Virginia Woolf when I was reading the actual words on the page, and the parts where I managed to banish the Myth from my mind where probably where I was most successful syncing with the book.
Speaking of the Myth of Virginia Woolf, the other thing Ji said I should report on was the Woolf/Feminism OTP. Again, in To the Lighthouse, there were places where I was reading and I went yes, that's right - usually in Lily Briscoe's narration, when she's thinking about this obligation that women have to be nice, to say the right and socially soothing thing, and sometimes you just don't want to. This is a big button of mine (as anyone will know who has listened to me babble about the song Last Midnight from Into the Woods.) But I also get the sense that - there is a Big Divide between Men and Women in the book, and there is, at the end, a feeling of overwhelming pity for Men and their foolishness and their need to be soothed by Women. That sense of divide is not my feminism.
That said, if I don't want divide, I should probably read Orlando for my next Foray Into Woolf . . . (I probably should have read it for my thesis anyways. But shush.)
schiarire gave me a Summer Reading Assignment to read Woolf and report back, so! To the Lighthouse:I found myself kind of flipping between two modes when reading the book. In Mode One, I was completely in-sync with the stream-of-consciousness writing and thinking, yes, Virginia Woolf, you truly are a genius at capturing the inner workings of the human mind! In Mode Two, the consciousness in the book was decidedly Not My Consciousness, and I was twiddling my thumbs and going, yes, Virginia Woolf, this is very interesting and experimental but perhaps we should move on. I am not sure whether the parts where I was closer and the parts where I were more distanced were a function of the book itself, or of my mindset while reading - it was often hard not to think about the Myth of Virginia Woolf when I was reading the actual words on the page, and the parts where I managed to banish the Myth from my mind where probably where I was most successful syncing with the book.
Speaking of the Myth of Virginia Woolf, the other thing Ji said I should report on was the Woolf/Feminism OTP. Again, in To the Lighthouse, there were places where I was reading and I went yes, that's right - usually in Lily Briscoe's narration, when she's thinking about this obligation that women have to be nice, to say the right and socially soothing thing, and sometimes you just don't want to. This is a big button of mine (as anyone will know who has listened to me babble about the song Last Midnight from Into the Woods.) But I also get the sense that - there is a Big Divide between Men and Women in the book, and there is, at the end, a feeling of overwhelming pity for Men and their foolishness and their need to be soothed by Women. That sense of divide is not my feminism.
That said, if I don't want divide, I should probably read Orlando for my next Foray Into Woolf . . . (I probably should have read it for my thesis anyways. But shush.)
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Date: 2008-07-14 07:48 pm (UTC)Oh and I'm reading my way through Unexpected Magic, DWJ is just so good.
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Date: 2008-07-14 10:17 pm (UTC)She SO is. The only reason I did not take Deep Secrets out of the library today for a reread is because I could not fit it in my bag. Next time!
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Date: 2008-07-14 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-14 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-14 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-14 10:53 pm (UTC)Am I meant to be looking at the downloadabilitude of these books? >:D
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Date: 2008-07-14 10:56 pm (UTC)>:) Maybe!
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Date: 2008-07-14 11:09 pm (UTC)(It feels extremely incongruous to be pairing Ando with a Virginia Woolf-related thread, but oh well.)
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Date: 2008-07-14 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-14 10:46 pm (UTC)Um, but the gist of my babble is, it is a thing that when female characters are not nice and good then they are witches and the antagonist and sometimes if you want to be right you don't have another choice but to be the witch. And. Yes! That is why that song is appropriate for a good fifty percent at least of the female characters I love most.
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Date: 2008-07-15 05:53 pm (UTC)*earnestface*
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Date: 2008-07-15 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-15 06:14 pm (UTC)Much of our conversational time is babbling about YA fiction instead.