I’m Not Afraid of Virginia Woolf, But Many Are
Mike, who has some serious disagreements with me on what should be included in the literary canon and what its purpose is, admits that he doesn’t really like Toni Morrison or Virginia Woolf. Now, having read both Woolf and Morrison in high school, I can definitely sympathize with him. Beloved, while telling an amazing story about the horrors of slavery that most people are rarely exposed to, has an entire section that is just bewilderingly obtuse. It also didn’t help that us reading Beloved sophomore year appeared to just be compensation for reading Huck Finn. And Virginia Woolf, well, she is early 20th century modernism at either its greatest or its worse. As an example of why some people love her and (most) find her to be frustrating is that To The Lighthouse has about a 3″ x5″ notecard worth of quoted dialog. And at one point, the house is the main narrating character.
What’s odd about Woolf’s inclusion in some high school curricula is that it’s almost certainly a token pick. Becuase if you wanted to expose some brave high schoolers to modernism, there’s enough Joyce and Faulkner to go around. But you really don’t want high schoolers to read Joyce and Faulkner, because amazingly obtuse, multi-perspective narrated novels with little plot and almost deliberating confusing narrative devices aren’t exactly the best stuff to mull over in a 45 minute high school English class. But if you have a woman writing that type of book, then there’s a good reason to include it. But the weird thing about To the Lighthouse is that it’s not particularly feminine, and while it does have a feminine and domestic perspective that many male-written novels lack, it’s that it’s particularly difficult to read and is probably unlike anything read in most high schools until then.
And that’s the great trick of including Virginia Woolf in high school curricula; you put her in for the same reason that you include tripe like House on Mango Street, and you expose high schoolers to some very legitimate literature that will challenge them in ways they haven’t really anticipated literature challenging them. That or they will hate it and never read Woolf or any modernist literature ever again.
Does two posts in one week make me a regular commenter? Or is this a statistical anomaly that is an example of “clustering”. Anyway, the reason I am posting is to share with you my experiences reading Beloved as an Asian-American male in my mid-20’s. Seeing as Toni Morrison was this huge literary figure, I thought I should read it for cultural literacy. The fact that I didn’t know there was a ghost until I had someone explain it to me shows you how little I connected or understood the book.
HEChen
February 26, 2008 at 12:18 am
As a high schooler who has read some Woolf – To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, I must say I fall into the few who love her work. There may be a lack of quoted dialog, but why is that specifically a problem? To the Lighthouse, in its constantly shifting perspectives cuts into the ambiguity of human interactions, and shows how little of what we say actually matters, or reflects what we are truly thinking or believe. And doesn’t the use of the House as a narrator only more poignantly weaves the story of the Ramsays together?
And you can’t deny the sheer artistry of her prose – she is certainly one of the most capable wordsmiths I have ever read. It may be obtuse, it may be impressionistic, but to a large degree, that’s what modernism was. You certainly don’t have to agree with someone’s philosophy to recognize its validity as a work of art.
I haven’t read any Morrison, so I’ll stay away from that, but I do agree that it seems somewhat odd to add Woolf to the canon. She’s important, yes, but as you say, Modernism probably has even more important representatives in Faulkner and Joyce.
Julien
February 27, 2008 at 5:29 pm