Who's Afraid? Fear Not!

A WRITER, ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONOUS
"Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully
in what is commonly thought big than
in what is commonly thought small. . . .
Down, down into the midst of ordinary things."

1902 & 1927


Rest in Peace Virginia Woolf:
25 January 1882 ~ 28 March 1941

"I am now galloping over Mrs. Dalloway. . . . The reviewers will say that it is disjointed because of the mad scenes not connecting with the Dalloway scenes. And I suppose there is some superficial glittery writing. But is it 'unreal'? Is it mere accomplishment? I think not. . . . it seems to leave me plunged deep in the richest strata of my mind. I can write and write and write now: the happiest feeling in the world." ~ Virginia Woolf, December 13, 1924

**********************

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

Shakespeare
from Cymbeline (Act IV, Scene 2, 2656 - 2689)

The opening lines of this Shakespearean song are quoted
several times by Clarissa Dalloway in Woolf's novel:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages. (13)

"Fear no more," said Clarissa.
Fear no more the heat o' the sun. (44)

. . . the world seems to be saying "that is all" more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking.” (59)

. . . she repeated and the words came to her,
Fear no more the heat of the sun.
She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night. (283)

Google Doodle on Woolf's 136th Birthday

**********************

Sometimes the connections are all about connections.

Armin van Buuren:
"Everyone’s connected but no one is connecting."
from the song: "Alone"

Joan Didion:
"In this light, all narrative was sentimental. In this light
all connections were equally meaningful and equally senseless."
from the essay: The White Album

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"If there's the slightest connection,
it's worth thinking about."
from the novel Player Piano

Donna Tartt:
"What held me fast . . . was the element of chance:
random disasters . . . converging on the same unseen point . . .
You could study the connections for years and never work it out
-- it was all about things coming together, things falling apart,
time warp . . . a way of seeing things twice, or more than twice.
. . . a field awareness of unseen patterns . . . ."(305)

"To try to make some meaning out of all this seems unbelievably quaint.
Maybe I only see a pattern because I've been staring too long. But then
again. . . maybe I see a pattern because it's there." (768)
from the novel The Goldfinch

Annie Barrows
"In books . . . things were connected; people did something
and then something else happened because of that.
I could understand them. But outside, here in the real world,
things seemed to happen for no reason that I could see.
Maybe there was no reason." (374)

"Did most girls my age feel the way I did, as if the people
I thought I knew had turned out to have a thousand little tunnels*
leading away from the face they showed the world? . . .
The buried parts, now, they were fascinating but ominous, too." (128)
from the novel The Truth According to Us

Virginia Woolf:
"I should say a good deal about The Hours [later entitled Mrs. Dalloway]
and my discovery: how I dig out beautiful caves* behind my characters:
I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humor, depth.
The idea is that the caves shall connect
and each come to daylight at the present moment."
from A Writer's Diary
~ Thursday, August 30, 1923 ~

*I'm also seeing a connection here between Woolf's "beautiful caves"
and Barrows' "thousand little tunnels . . . fascinating but ominous"!

**********************

The previous year, Woolf had written:

"Mrs. Dalloway has branched into a book;
and I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide;
the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side
-- something like that. Septimus Smith? is that a good name?"
~ Saturday, October 14, 1922 ~

And in 1998, film critic Jack Kroll wrote:

Mrs.Dalloway's day is climaxed by her party, Smith's by his suicide. But these contrasting events are two parts of a symbolic whole, Virginia Woolf herself. Mrs. Dalloway is a Woolf without the genius, while Smith's fate prefigures the troubled Woolf's own suicide in 1941 [on March 28th]. In her notebook Woolf wrote, 'Mrs. D seeing the truth. SS seeing the insane truth.'"

from "Down in the Upper Crust:
Virginia Woolf's Landmark Novel Dazzles on Screen"
in Newsweek, March 2, 1998

**********************

In conclusion, only last month I was dismayed to find this trivializing assessment (an opinion I suppose shared by many) of Clarissa Dalloway's immersion into the details of one perhaps ordinary yet fateful day. In a book about teaching that I otherwise liked very much, Heather Kirn Lanier writes:

"In college, I'd spent my years studying the narrative stances of Virginia Woolf, appreciating the relative plotlessness of Mrs. Dalloway a book in which, let's face it, not much happens."

Au contraire! For Woolf's characters, it is a day filled with grief, intropsection, tension; and enlarged understanding. Oh dear. One does not throw a party -- nor encounter death in the midst of that party -- everyday. Still, though, I was touched to read that Kirn Lanier's students mistook her black and white postcard of Virginia Woolf to be "some great - grandmother of mine" (47, 77).

Virginia ~ Woolfpack
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading ~ "Makin' a list, checking' it twice . . ."
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

To Live Even One Day

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

On the Esopus, Meadow Groves, ca. 1857–58

&

Cows in the Meadow, 1878

both paintings by Scottish - American Artist
William M. Hart, 1823 - 1894

There are so many things to say about Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's elegant interior novel of one day -- plus flashbacks -- in the life of Clarissa Parry Dalloway. Is it my favorite novel? I always hesitate to choose only one, but it just might be, especially after I earned the nickname of "Clarissa / Mrs. Dalloway" a couple of different times:

1. Once by an old grad school friend who said: "Maybe you're not the life of the party in a class clown kind of way, but you are CLARISSA DALLOWAY" (this was after we had taken one of those personality profiles that placed me higher than I thought was accurate on the "social butterfly / loves company" scale).

2. And again by a friend who alluded to Mrs. Dalloway when she wrote to congratulate me upon being included in an historical house tour: "Congratulations! Glad you had a good house tour, Clarissa. Sounds like a lot of work, but you love doing it and wouldn't consider not. You go, super mom, super Mrs. Dalloway. Did everyone behave with proper respect, or were they touching your stuff and leaving their BIG GULP cups all over the place? Did you have to dress up like a house slave, or were you allowed to be Mrs. O'Hara? (Remember the "Designing Women" episode when Julia's house is on a tour?) Perhaps you wore an elegant Ann Taylor dress and cooly answered questions regarding the age of the fireplace. Or, in true British fashion, retired to your private quarters during the tour (pronounced too-ah). By the way, I have yet to read that book so I hope my Mrs. Dalloway hostess attribution is a good one!" I assured her that am always honored to be compared to Mrs. Dalloway and that, yes, her reference made perfect sense!

I vividly recall walking into the theatre (Ritz at the Bourse, Philadelphia, 1997) right in the middle of a preview for Mrs. Dalloway. Without any prior knowledge of this upcoming film or verbal hints (voice over or text on the screen), I knew, the instant I saw the depiction of London streets and houses and Vanessa Redgrave in her gorgeous Virginia Woolf dress and hat: "It's Mrs. Dalloway!" In that sudden "moment of being," I was transported to the last page of the novel when Peter Walsh looks across the room and says, "It is Clarissa."

So where do you start? How do you solve a problem like Clarissa? "Down, down into the midst of ordinary things . . . the supreme mystery . . . was simply this: here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that? Or love?" (193, emphasis added).

Mrs. Dalloway (Vanessa Redgrave) on the balcony,
glancing across the street into her neighbor's room


I'll begin with a letter I received from my sister Peggy last summer. I was excited when she told me she was reading Mrs. Dalloway. I hoped that she would love it as much as I do, and I gave her permission to go ahead and watch the movie version even if she hadn't finished the novel yet. I know some may disapprove, and I surely wouldn't recommend that in all cases, but this excellent movie is so consistent, so true to the novel word for word, and so beautiful, that I made an exception!

Soon after Peg finished the novel, she wrote: I've been meaning to write for several days now to tell you two of my favorite lines:

"She was for the party!"
[Response from me: What a great party quote! I have always loved Peter Walsh's comment, but after Peg's note, I began to think that "She was for the party!" is an even better encapsulation of the essence of Clarissa.]

and [returning to Peg's letter] Clarissa's description of Sir Harry:

"'Dear Sir Harry!' she said, going up to the fine fellow who had produced more bad pictures than any other two Academicians in the whole of St. John's Wood (they were always of cattle, standing in sunset pools absorbing moisture, or signifying, for he had a certain range of gesture, by the raising of one foreleg and the toss of the antlers, 'the Approach of the Stranger' --all his activities, dining out, racing, were founded on cattle standing absorbing moisture in sunset pools)" (266).

I just love the thought of such a banal subject as cows standing around in ponds at sunset "absorbing moisture." Still makes me smile.

Cows Watering

Seems that Woolf may have had artist William M. Hart in mind
when she created the character of Sir Harry.
I told Peg at the time that her observation about the cow painting was perfect for my Quotidian blog because she expresses so well the thought that the cows are quotidian! Sir Harry keeps us grounded -- maybe in a boring way, but also in a good way!

Peg went on to say: I've watched both of the movies, Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. I liked them both, and they did play well with the book, but I have to say that The Hours was a sad movie. Brenda let me borrow her copy which had commentary by the various actors, writers, and producer(s) which explained some parts of the movie that I had difficulty understanding, but they didn't make it any less sad. The book had it's sad parts, but the movie seemed to be just one sad tale after another with no real joy. I think they needed Sir Harry and his paintings to lighten the movie a little.

My response: Remember Clarissa's thought right at the beginning of Woolf's novel: "she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day" (11). That's the one line that has stayed with me more than any other from the first time I ever read Mrs. Dalloway.

Perhaps it is also very very sad to live even one day. Clarissa conveys as much when she hears about the death of Septimus Warren Smith, and makes the startled observation: "Oh . . . in the middle of my party, here's death" (279). Maybe that explains the deep sadness of The Hours -- it concentrates more on death than on the party. [See also the conclusion of my post "American . . . Gothic," for a little twist on the idea of "death in the middle of the party, a successful allusion, I hope.]

I was thrilled with the movie of Mrs. Dalloway but skeptical to learn that Michael Cunningham's contemporary (1998) novel The Hours was woven around Mrs. Dalloway. I was filled with misgiving at first: how dare anyone touch Woolf's masterpiece! I love Mrs. Dalloway so much, I wasn't sure that I wanted to see it experimented with. However, it turns out that Cunningham's re - perception of Woolf's novel is equally and amazingly beautiful. I became a true believer in no time; after only a few pages, I was mesmerized by Cunningham's finely crafted novel and the way in which it honors Woolf. You may remember that Virginia Woolf's first title idea for Mrs. Dalloway was The Hours, thus Cunningham's choice of title. What he has done is use Virginia Woolf as a character in his novel, plus a contemporary New Yorker named Clarissa Vaughan, and a 1940's housewife, Laura Brown, who is reading Mrs. Dalloway just a few years after Woolf's suicide. The Hours is really a hymn -- can't think of a better way to say it -- to Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway.

Just as I found the movie of Mrs. Dalloway more beautifully done and true to the novel than I would have ever imagined possible, so too was the subsequent movie of The Hours, starring Meryl Streep and Ed Harris. It's hard, impossible really, for me to imagine what reading or seeing The Hours would mean if I were unfamiliar with Mrs. Dalloway. Possibly Michael Cunningham is such a genius that the reader can still love his story without the literary background of Woolf and her contemporaries. I can't say for sure since there's no way for me to go back and read The Hours without knowledge of Mrs. Dalloway. Of course, each book / movie stands alone as a complete creative expression; so I guess you could read or see them in any order: Mrs. Dalloway, book and movie; then The Hours, book and movie. Or maybe both books, then both movies. You pick! How can you go wrong?

Vanessa Redgrave as Clarissa Dalloway


Meryl Streep as Clarissa Vaughan


Several years back (2004), Gerry, Ben, and Sam allowed me to orchestrate a Christmas Day Film Festival, to include Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. Both movies are so perfectly rendered and aligned with the books that the boys could follow every single nuance -- they were not too young for it. I hope one day they'll read the novels; but, if not, they've got those stories and a bit of Virginia's prose inside their heads now, one way or another.

Which is to say, if you absolutely can't find time to read Mrs. Dalloway, then go ahead and watch the film and consider yourself ready to view The Hours. Both books and both movies are now and forever on my list of all-time favorites; and I would happily recommend all four to anyone in search of a literary project for the summer. Anticipating the fact that you might miss a few allusions along the way, here are some to look for:

1. In addition to the Mrs. Dalloway parallels, Cunningham also includes an extended allusion to Doris Lessing's story "To Room Nineteen." Laura Brown's quest for personal space is taken straight from Lessing, with Laura even checking into Room 19 when she goes to the hotel to contemplate suicide and read Mrs. Dalloway for the afternoon.

2. Yet another passage in The Hours calls to mind the artist Lily Briscoe in Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. [See my post on Mrs. Ramsay: "A Little Strip of Time," 12 May 2012]

In Woolf's novel, while seated at Mrs. Ramsay's famous dinner table, Lily Briscoe's mind wanders away from the conversation as she thinks of her painting: "She remembered all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That's what I shall do. That's what has been puzzling me. She took up the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower in the pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree . . . There's the sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters -- nothing else . . . her spirits rose so high at the thought of painting tomorrow that she laughed out loud . . . she would move the tree rather more toward the middle" (To the Lighthouse, 128, 130, 140, 154). Not until the last page of the novel does the idea for the final stroke occur to Lily, when she takes out the old rolled up painting and finally finishes it at long last.

Likewise, Cunningham's character in The Hours daydreams of the creative process while arranging the silverware: "As Laura set the plates and forks on the table--as they ring softly on the starched white cloth--it seems she has succeeded suddenly, at the last minute, the way a painter might brush a final line of color onto a painting and save it from incoherence; the way a writer might set down the line that brings to light the submerged patterns and symmetry in the drama. It has to do, somehow, with setting plates and forks on a white cloth. It is as unmistakable as it is unexpected" (The Hours, 207).

And then there's Clarissa Dalloway, who

"was going that very night to kindle and illuminate;

to give her party. . . .

All was for the party."
(6, 56)
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, June 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Sunset With Cows
by Scottish - American Artist ~ William M. Hart, 1823 - 1894

Room, Board, and Body

A ROOM WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

A Room of One's Own?
Photo essay from Victoria Magazine ~ April 1992
Looking through an old notebook, I came across the above article from twenty - some years ago, which I saved apparently in sheer dismay at its blatant misuse of Virginia Woolf. Usually I found the literary passages accompanying Victoria's visuals to be strikingly appropriate; yet in this instance, the editors were quoting from A Room of One's Own (1928) with little respect to the original context.

When Woolf thought "of the admirable smoke and drink and the deep armchairs and the pleasant carpets: of the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space" she was writing not of London but of Oxford. Nor was she praising the town's charm and elegance; rather, she was describing rooms from which, sadly, the women of her time were categorically excluded (emphasis added).

She concludes this observation from the opening chapter of A Room of One's Own with the lament that "Certainly our mothers had not provided us with anything comparable to all this -- our mothers who found it difficult to scrape together thirty thousand pounds. . . . To raise bare walls out of the bare earth was the utmost they could do (24, 23).

But Woolf's perceptions, however poetic, constitute a severe criticism of the structural exclusion of female students from the traditional institutions of higher education. For Victoria -- itself a celebration of the "luxury and privacy and space" now available to many women -- to suggest otherwise is a grave disservice to both Virginia Woolf and the readers of Victoria.

I suppose the Woolf passage in Victoria Magazine jumped right out at me because I myself had included it in an article that I was working on at the time -- "The Student Body in the Text" -- for Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies ~ 14.3). The narrator of A Room of One's Own is an imaginary and imaginative student, thrown into distress because of her gender, an outsider looking in, a character who is chastised for wandering into territory traditionally open only to men. The harsh reality for Woolf's female scholar is not only to be wished from the room by the social structure but to be physically denied entry in the first place. On her way to the library, "walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot," she is intercepted by a Beadle whose face "expressed horror and indignation. . . . I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here." Regaining her composure, she arrives at the library and is met by "a kindly gentleman who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied a Fellow of the College" (5 - 8).

Being denied access causes her to challenge the privilege of those who were admitted and those whose books lined the shelves: "young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken no degree . . . Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women." She concludes that "The most transient visitor to this planet . . . who picked up [the evening] paper could not fail to be aware . . . that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence" (27 - 28, 33).

What accounts for the power gap between the diffidence of the female students and the confidence of the male students? One elusive element which may account for the discrepancy is the self - confidence that Woolf describes as that "imponderable quality, which is yet so valuable": "Life for both sexes . . . is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps . . . it calls for confidence in oneself." She further suggests that if there exists any short - cut to developing or appropriating this invaluable attribute it is "By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority . . . over other people." To precisely such ill - gotten gains does she attribute the "enormous importance: and power of the patriarchy -- not to mention the tomes of misogynist scholarship which she has encountered in the library. She puzzles over the refrain of misogynist anger which runs through text after text, the fear of losing power, the perceived threat to the homosocial contract: "Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting . . . because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price." As for the male students who are groomed professionally to inherit this rarest of jewels, their birthright is the conviction of saying "to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self - confidence, that self - assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind" (34 - 37).

Looking at additional discrepancies, Woolf raises bodily functions to the level of theory, particularly in her comparison of an exquisite luncheon at the men's college to a humble dinner at the women's college. She writes against the time - honored division between mind and body: "The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments . . . a good dinner is of great importance." The vast difference between the two meals brings to her mind images of fat cows and lean cows, bold rats and timid rats: "I have seen a dairy company measure the effect of ordinary milk and Grade A upon the body of a rat. They set two rats in cages side by side, and of the two one was furtive, timid and small, and the other was glossy, bold and big. Now what food do we feed women as artists upon? I asked, remembering, I suppose, that dinner of prunes and custard." For surely, "The lamp in the spine does not light on beef and prunes" (18, 54 - 55).

Woolf addresses here not only the division between mind and body but the distinction between educational opportunities for the two sexes: "Why did men drink wine and women water?" Why did the women's college lack and ample endowments and trust funds which provided the men's schools with "the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space." Why indeed had it been so difficult to raise the modest sum required to found the women's college at all when, on the other hand, immense sums for boys' schools could be raised with considerable ease? "Why," she asks, "are women poor?" (24 - 28, emphasis added).

Although Woolf heroically curses the discriminatory practices of the academy " . . . turn me off the grass. Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind," (78 - 79), she also points out that the freedom of the mind can indeed be hampered -- by deprivation and discouragement, by the lack of a tradition, "by all the power of law and custom," by not being heard (24, 50, 54). She sought to rectify this inequity by urging women to forge their own educational, professional,and literary traditions. There is a subtle connection between participating in a dialogue, forging a tradition, and gaining self - esteem:

" . . . if we face the fact . . . that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality [i.e., "the universal human, beyond gender"] and not only to the word of men and women [the world of "sexual difference"], then . . . the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born" (118).

Woolf describes a place for the female body in our culture and gives that body a voice in the text. When women participate in this discourse, they can formulate the images that escape the bemused and frustrated student in A Room of One's Own; they can envision with confidence their place in the academy, gaining entry to the library and putting pen to paper; they can live at ease within their bodies; they can articulate the truth of their own experience.

Also,
check out these beautiful illustrations
. . . and more!
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, May 28th

Between now and then,
read related posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
Throwback Letter to Editor
Too Beautiful to Go on a Diet
Weighing In
The Student Body in the Text
The Fire Was Hot Within Her

And on
KITTI'S LIST
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 1
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 2
A Girl and Her Book

Life -- A Little Strip of Time

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

MONK'S HOUSE ~ HOME OF LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF

VIRGINIA WOOLF'S LIVING ROOM
For Mother's Day, I thought I would write about one of the most steadfast mothers in modern British fiction, Mrs. Ramsay from Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf had no children, but Mrs. Ramsay has eight; and Woolf intuitively fills Mrs. Ramsay's head and the first half of the novel with touching motherly insights. Except for the youngest son James, the Ramsay children are rarely mentioned in literary criticism of To the Lighthouse. James, of course, figures prominently at the center of the conflict that opens the novel: will he or will he not be taken to the lighthouse the next day?

But what of James' siblings and Mrs. Ramsay's feelings for them: Andrew, Prue, Jasper, Rose, Roger, Nancy, and Cam? Sitting out on the yard, visiting with her guests and surrounded by her children, Mrs. Ramsay is the image of earthliness, providing spiritual and artistic inspiration to others. Her ability to inspire is rooted in her role as a living, earthly mother, caring for her children, experiencing conflict with them and for them, providing for them at present, and hoping they may find a solid happiness that will stand against the unknowable future of temporal existence. Monitoring the behavior of her brood, Mrs. Ramsay wonders at the early development of their capacity for strife and prejudice: "They were so critical, her children" (17).

One of the guests, Mr. Bankes, relates his singular method of distinguishing the children one from another: "As for being sure which was which, or in what order they came, that was beyond him. He called them privately after the Kings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked, James the Ruthless, Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair -- for Prue would have beauty, he thought, how could she help it? -- and Andrew brains" (37). Mr. Ramsay, himself, makes the following assessment of his role as father: "The father of eight children -- he reminded himself. And he would have been a beast and a cur to wish a single thing altered. Andrew would be a better man than he had been. Prue would be a beauty, her mother said. They would stem the flood a bit. That was a good bit of work on the whole -- his eight children" (106).

From Mrs. Ramsay's point of view comes the one list in the book to mention every child. She presents a brief but full bodied portrait of each, thinking of James and Cam first with especial longing, for they are her babies:

"Oh but she never wanted James to grow a day older! Or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long - legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss. . . . why should they grow up and lose all that? . . . She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. . . . Prue, a perfect angel with the others, and sometimes now, at night especially, she took one's breath away with her beauty. Andrew -- even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild creatures. . . . As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands. . . . She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast? . . . And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be so happy again. . . . They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days." (89 - 90)

She sees the mortality of her children; and despite the promise she sees in each one, she senses the fleeting quality of their happiness and their childhood. She questions the temporariness and the temporality of their existence, but she does not consider immortality, only their earthly happiness. She does not want them ever to grow away from the state of "radical innocence" that Yeats refers to in his poem "A Prayer for My Daughter":

Prayer For My Daughter
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

William Butler Yeats, 1865 - 1939
Irish poet and dramatist
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1923

[See previous posts:
September 14, 2009
November 28, 2010]

Mrs. Ramsay's wish for her children is as fervent as Yeats' but not as hopeful. She wishes for a prolongation of childhood rather than a recovery of innocence. She has no faith in reparation for loss nor in any power which will guarantee happiness to her children in the face of unkindness and upheaval. Instead she wishes that neither she nor they would ever lose the days of their innocence. When she says, "Nothing made up for the loss," she thinks of her own loss as the mother of little dependent children. But knowing how they will slip away, she resigns herself, thinking of Mr. Ramsay's accusation that she is "pessimistic" and has a "gloomy view of life" (91). Though her view of life and time passing angers her husband, the nostalgia she anticipates and her clear sense of loss and finality ("She thought life -- and a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes," 91) is not unfounded. It is, in fact, confirmed by the detached narrator of the middle section of the novel who impartially and in merest passing records the deaths of Prue in childbirth, Andrew at war, and Mrs. Ramsay herself in the night.

Prue's early death, though, is quite the opposite of the future envisioned for her by her mother. For despite Mrs. Ramsay's private certainty that "there was no treachery too base for the world to commit" (98), she holds out hope and endurance to her children:

" . . . she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There was always a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she said to all these children, You shall go through it all. To eight people she said relentlessly that." (92)

Tablescape by Katy Bunder

At the dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay notices that Prue is "just beginning, just moving, just descending" into the adult world (164) and protectively wills that Prue shall have a happy future. In her concern for Prue's contentment, Mrs. Ramsay mirrors another of the desires expressed in Yeats' "Prayer," his hope that his daughter will be blessed with a loving mate and a happy home, grounded on the stability and affirmation of tradition. She expresses her appreciation of a place "where all's accustomed." She knows the significance of being "rooted in one dear perpetual place."

Mrs. Ramsay joys in her children ("For one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forward," 122); and she is sensitive to their aches and pains, especially their emotional woes. Her heart breaks at the thought of James' disappointment when the excursion to the lighthouse is cancelled. The novel is punctuated by her motherly concern for James's frustrated expedition and a desire to somehow make up to him what cannot be made up.

She is sympathetic also with her creative daughter, Rose, seeing that in some ways they are so alike. In the scene preceding the famous dinner party, Mrs. Ramsay is seen at her most intimate and relaxed with the two children, Rose and Jasper, who visit her room before dinner, ministering to her as she looks to them to inspire her perceptions. She is happy, teasing and indulging them as they help her decide what necklace to wear to dinner.

She urges them to hurry with the jewels, " 'choose, dearests, choose.' " She is not loathe to be associated with their choices. She is patient, knowing that Rose has "some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. . . . And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed with these deep feelings. . . . Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was bound to suffer so." She identifies closely with Rose and realizes that her feelings for Rose are for herself as well. When exploring her own bewilderment over Rose's little ceremony of choosing the jewels, she thinks, "Like all feelings felt for oneself . . . it made one sad" (122 - 23).

Mrs. Ramsay is intuitive and creative, exhibiting love and care and motherly concern in numerous instances throughout the first section of the novel. She is filled with anxiety on her children's behalf, but also with pride. Fearing that the children are about to erupt in laughter over some private joke at dinner, she says to them -- by way of maintaining order and altering the dinner table dynamic: " 'Light the candles' " (145). Standing down the length of the table and illuminating an elaborate centerpiece designed by Rose, the tall candles number eight, just as Mrs. Ramsay's children do.
Happy Mother's Day!
Tablescape by Tina McCartney

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, May 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

My friend Jill sent me the little wreath of roses a couple of years ago, and I put it inside this larger Easter wreath to make a summery candleholder.

Women's Room

A ROOM WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Caution: Women!
A post to coincide with
Menstrual Hygiene Day ~ 28 May

“We don’t look into menstruation as a man or a woman issue . . .
both have equal roles to play in changing the overall perception.”
~ Dhirendra Pratap Singh ~
helping the Indian government build schools
that have adequate infrastructure for women,
including separate toilets

"We see a world where no woman is held back by her body.
We will work proudly and tirelessly until every single girl
has an equal opportunity for the brighter future she deserves.
By reimagining feminine hygiene products to provide support,
comfort, confidence, and peace of mind,
we aim to eliminate shame,
empowering women and girls around the world."
~ Miki Agrawal, Radha Agrawal, Antonia Dunbar ~
Co - founders of THINX

"Once I had a dream. In the dream I was to receive a diploma
as a spiritual teacher or guide of some sort. There were two of us
being presented with such a certificate at the time. The other was a man -- Swamibabaguruishiroshirabbaisoandso.
He wore long colorful robes and had a fist full of degrees and papers.
To receive his diploma he only had to step forward and present himself
with his long titles, flowing robes, and abundant credentials.
But before me there stood an enormous mountain of laundry.
To receive my diploma
I would first have to climb over this huge heap of laundry."
~ Polly Berrien Berends ~
from Whole Child / Whole Parent

Perhaps nightmares in this vein constitute one of the hidden narratives of the feminine consciousness, an experience that is shared by many but rarely written into the script. American novelist, Marilyn French (1929 - 2009) includes a similar narrative in her 1977 novel, The Women's Room, which follows the progress of a group of friends -- Mira, Martha, Val, Isolde, Clarissa, and Kyla -- through the graduate program in English Literature at Harvard. They struggle against the innate superiority which they sense in their male colleagues and professors. Their submerged feelings of inadequacy are illustrated in a dream that haunts Kyla shortly before her orals. As a prospective graduate student, she is forced to confront a sexist legacy and a pile of laundry similar to that described above by Polly Berrien Berends. In the Women's Room nightmare, Kyla has just entered the exam room, "when she spied the pile in the corner. Instantly she knew what it was, but she was incredulous, she was so ashamed. . . . She was horrified. Those stained sanitary napkins, those bloody underpants were hers, she knew they were hers, and she knew the men would know it too . . . but there was no way she could conceal them" (561 - 562).

The events of these nightmares suggest the ever - present tension between mind and body which informs the female students' educational pursuits. In these dreams, the women feel defined first by their physicality, second by their intellectual activity. When Kyla's test day arrives, the corner of the room is empty; nervously she endures the next two hours, and at last "the judgment having been whispered in her ear by the director, she trembled down the wooden stairs." Willing back the tears, she makes her way, gripping the banister, to her friends who wait below, asking "'How did you do?'" When she answers them, "the words gurgled out of her wet throat, 'I passed,' and they cheered, but they must have seen, must have been able to know" (562 - 563).

Jane Gallop, in her recollection of graduate school, remembers "trying to imagine my future place. How would I pass? In 1977, having 'passed,' I was trying to imagine being an academic speaker as a woman" (71). She places the word passed in quotation marks, giving it the connotation of passed as Blacks once passed for white (Imitation of Life), or Jews for Gentiles (Miss Rose White) in search of social acceptance, trying to surmount the labels of difference and the stigma of otherness. Kyla strives in frustration to battle both the imagined and the real blockades of sexual difference and to maintain a sense of legitimacy in the face of the patriarchy, embodied as it is for her in the three male professors who intimidate her at the exam table. Kyla's wary response to the all - male committee is typical.

In an intriguing essay, "Out of Mere Words," James Klein, says that it is symptomatic of our profession's emphasis on the spoken word "that most horror stories about Ph.D. - getting concern the oral examination." But Kyla's anxiety is informed by more than a fear of verbal articulation; it derives primarily -- as she herself points out -- from apprehensions concerning her gender; she feels invalidated by her own menses and confides in her best friend: " 'I really failed. . . . That's the truth. . . . They said I passed. . . . But I really failed. . . . They demoralized me, they had that kind of power, I gave them that kind of power. And you can tell from the dream what the grounds were. I can't feel legitimate in the face of them' " (563 - 564).

Kyla realizes that the structure threatens somehow to exclude her, sensing what philosophical critic Iris Marion Young (1949 - 2006) would call a threat to her basic security system (and perhaps her presence threatens her patriarchal professors at this same level). Drawing on the work of British sociologist Anthony Giddens (b. 1938), Young describes three frontiers of subjectivity where prejudice can be found: the discursive consciousness (e.g., it is no longer socially acceptable to say that a woman using a library calls to mind a dog dancing on its hind legs); the practical consciousness (e.g., women can no longer be denied access to campus buildings, yet having gained entry, their presence can still be dismissed by those around them); and the basic security system, i.e., "the subject's ontological integrity" and "basic sense of competence and autonomy." Young explains that "In everyday action and interaction, the subject reacts, introjects, and reorients itself in order to maintain or reinstate its basic security system" (Justice and the Politics of Difference, 131 - 132).

The basic security system is the point at which "bodily integrity" is threatened and "the subject must keep herself together." Prejudice at the second and third level is more insidious than at the first because it consists of unspoken "fears, aversions, avoidances, symbolic forms and association, abjection and border anxiety": "There are material implications (e.g., who sits behind what desk) to making judgments based on the feelings lodged at these two levels. Rationalization is very common among the empowered." Prejudice, Young suggests, is receding from the discursive level of consciousness and being internalized in the practical consciousness and the basic security system. What can no longer be said can still be done, can still be thought. Nor do these thoughts go unperceived by the subject at whom they are directed, even though the "dominant social etiquette" may find it "indecorous" or "tactless" to acknowledge these perceptions at the discursive level. Because our culture tends to "separate reason from the body and affectivity," it is difficult for characters like Kyla to trust or express what might be called their gut reactions. Groups or individuals "oppressed by structures of cultural imperialism . . . not only suffer the humiliation of aversion, avoiding, or condescending behavior, but must usually experience that behavior in silence" (comments noted when Young spoke at the "Colloquium on Cultural Narratives," Purdue University, April 1989; see also Justice and the Politics of Difference, 134).

Kyla confronts not only the verbal challenge of the oral exam but a tradition that for centuries cast women as the silent sex. She speaks not only as a student but as a woman; she will be evaluated not only as a Ph.D. candidate but as a woman, making her way in a world where "the feminine alone must bear the burden of sexual difference." Young, in her summary of Simone de Beauvoir, says that "Whatever might be her position in the world and whatever her individual accomplishments, a woman is appraised first as a woman, and only afterward for her position or accomplishments" (Throwing Like a Girl, 75).

The task of making herself heard is one which, by the end of The Women's Room, Kyla has begun to feel herself unequal too. Yes, she has made it into the room, no embarrassing feminine debris is cluttering the floor, and no one is giggling -- but is anyone listening? She may enter the library at will, may cross the quadrangle at leisure yet still feel invalidated, not to mention "slightly crazy": "The courage to bring to discursive consciousness behavior and reactions occurring at the level of practical consciousness is met with denial and powerful gestures of silencing, which can make oppressed people feel slightly crazy" (Young, 134).

Virginia Woolf likewise believes that "even when the path is nominally open -- when there is nothing to prevent a woman from being a doctor, lawyer, a civil servant -- there are many phantoms and obstacles . . . looming in her way ("Professions for Women," 241). If Young's model is applied to Woolf's image, then these phantoms are lurking in the practical consciousness and haunting the basic security system. In A Room of One's Own [see last week's Fortnightly post: "Room, Board, and Body"], Woolf refers to such obstacles as the structure of traditions, laws, and social policies which have consistently disregarded women; yet, concerning the ambiguous position and the dubious "tradition manque" which women have inherited, she says that "it was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control" (38); that is, they are driven by the need to maintain their basic security systems. One of the obstacles for Kyla, internalized in the practical consciousness and the basic security system is structural exclusion; and she intuits that there is more at stake for her than a pass / fail grade.

In 1977, Marilyn French's fictional students embodied Virginia Woolf's even earlier (1929) insistence upon higher education for girls. With the admission of women, even peripherally, to the academy, changes were required, difference had to be accommodated, and the presence of the Other acknowledged. At the most basic level, the tradition of critical thought intersected with the inevitability of "our bodily givens" and campus buildings began, however slowly, to feature doors which read "Ladies" or "Women." The body of the female student makes her way through the hallways of academia, where she strives to determine her own fate; and through novels like The Women's Room that explore the realm of academic experience from the perspective of a female narrator. In the late 1970s and early 80s, reading and re - reading this "profoundly influential novel" was a consciousness - raising rite of passage -- opening doors, discussions, and minds. Thanks to Marilyn French for re - thinking gender equity, popularizing feminism, and confirming our intellectual and physical experience.

P.S.

1. Fun Fact: Marilyn French is mentioned in ABBA's 1982 song "The Day Before You Came":
"I must have read a while,
the latest one by Marilyn French
or something in that style."
2. I've been trying to track down a poem that I've misplaced and thought I'd mention here in case anyone out there recognizes the reference. I'm almost certain that the title is "Feast Day." The narrator is a woman who is feeling sad on the first day of her period, and the concluding line is "languorous blood." Does that happen to ring any bells? I remember reading it back in the late 1970s, early 80s, but can't remember where. I've looked through all my old anthologies and notebooks but can't find it; and I've tried numerous google searches with no luck. I can't remember the poet, but vaguely thought that it might be Joyce Carol Oates. It seems to me that in the middle of the poem, she is looking out of a large window, watching children ice - skating on a pond and feeling fearful of their safety, but it could also be that I've borrowed that skating image from another forgotten poem -- that I also need to find -- and merged it with the "Feast Day" poem in my mind. [gmail, October 15, 2013]

3. June 14, 2015: It's tempting to think of Kyla's anxiety as obsolete in this, the enlightened 21st Century -- yet even here and now, a male recipient of the Nobel prize calls into the question the presence of "female students" in his science laboratories. Really?

4. Related posts:

FORTNIGHTLY
Room, Board, and Body

QUOTIDIAN
Throwback Letter to Editor
Too Beautiful to Go on a Diet
Weighing In
The Student Body in the Text
The Fire Was Hot Within Her

KITTI'S LIST
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 1
Try to See It, Try to Feel It: The Body in the Text ~ Part 2
A Girl and Her Book

Choose Dearests, Choose

GEMS FOREVER
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

As a child, looking through my parents' album collection
I was always drawn to this treasure chest: Gems Forever!

"1962 - Boise"
That's my mom's handwriting, perhaps
when she bought the album for my dad.

I was only 4 at the time, but I can remember her
wearing the sandstone jewelry when we lived in Idaho.

The sparkly set was added a few years later,
when we lived in Neosho and I was 8 or 9.

Still in their original box;
it says "Priscilla" on the inside & "Floyd's" on the outside.

My mother's necklaces make me think of Virginia Woolf's lovely description in To the Lighthouse of the children rummaging around in Mrs. Ramsay's jewelry box:

"And if Rose liked . . . she might choose which jewels she was to wear.

" . . .Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold necklace. Which looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs. Ramsay absent-mindedly . . . And then, while the children rummaged among her things . . .

"But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear her amethysts?

" 'Choose, dearests, choose,' " she said, hoping that they would make haste.

"But she let them take their time to choose: she let Rose, particularly, take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against the black dress, for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone through every night, was what Rose liked best, she knew. She had some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs. Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said she was ready now, and they would go down, and Jasper, because he was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and Rose, as she was the lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her the handkerchief), and what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl. Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was bound to suffer so."

(120 - 123, emphasis added)
[And thanks to my friend and fellow scholar
Victoria Amador for sharing my reading of this passage]

[Read more about Virginia Woolf:
Fortnightly ~ Quotidian ~ Kitti's List]

***************

Additional Connections

In "The Diamond Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant,
Mme. Jeanne Forestier says to Mme. Mathilde Loisel:
"Choose, my dear."

In "Wild Montana Skies"
John Denver & Emmylou Harris
sing of the conflicted, contemplative character who
was born with the blessing / curse of deep feeling and
" . . . never knew the answers
that would make an easy way . . . "
[kind of like "Rose, who was bound to suffer so"]

In one of my 4th - grade favorites,
Ginnie and the Mystery Doll by Catherine Woolley,
Ginnie and Geneva follow the trail of a long - lost antique doll,
a recently painted portrait of the doll, a red Jaguar,
and -- a missing jewel! -- a conch pearl.

I took a couple of hours to re-read this childhood classic, and was touched by Ginnie's similarity to Rose:

"Ginnie gave a sad little sigh. This was the best, the most beautiful part of the day. The air felt cool when she sat up, but the sand still held the day's warmth and the wind had dropped. A path of molten gold led straight across the silken water to the setting sun." (45)

"The summer days were slipping along now. Ginnie treasured every one. As the summer had advanced, a new world had come into being for her -- the world at the edge of the sea. . . . So, each new day unfolded its own lovely pattern. Ginnie hugged every one to her heart." (83, 85)

As with Rose, Ginnie "loved anything resembling a story" but every now and again she had "the strange sensation [of being] alone in a hostile world" (111, 117).

Need I say it? Bound to suffer so.

Previous Fortnightly Posts in this series
Re: Jewel, Rainbow, Splendor
Heirloom Jewelry
Diamond Studs Are Forever
AND MORE

Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, July 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Mantovani Christmas
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

I Will Show You Modernism In A Handful of Dust

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Painting by Leonard Orr ~ Handful of Dust in the Wind
Mimi Allin writes:
"land sky heaped feathered leading discouraging
porcupined lit bloated muffled"
This Fortnightly's connections are all about the Ache of Modernism, the sudden tortured awareness of the unlived life, the life which dared nothing -- or not enough. As Carolyn Heilbrun writes of D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930): " . . . he understood that the mortal risk was not, or was no longer, death; it had become the possibility that life, the lived life, might be evaded." Historical discontinuity, alienation, asocial individualism, existentialism, melancholy -- these were the issues at hand. Horror to horror. Dust to dust.

Unlike the Romantic movement, which can be dated from a specific event -- the publication in 1798 of the Lyrical Ballads, Modernism begins less deliberately (unless you ask Virginia Woolf; more on this next time). There is not an initial document, such as the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads," which sets forth the tenets of Modernism and heralds a movement to which writers may rally. Instead, one must look in the works themselves to locate the key concepts shaping the tone of the canon. In chronological order, here are a few of my favorites:

Joseph Conrad / Heart of Darkness (1902):
"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, —
he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath —
'The horror! The horror!'" [emphasis added]

Henry James / "The Beast in the Jungle" (1903):
"So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. . . . It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One’s doom, however, was never baffled . . . The escape would have been to love her . . . This horror of waking-- this was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze." [emphasis added]

E. M. Forster / Howards End (1910):
"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” [emphasis added]

T.S. Eliot / The Wasteland (1922):
" . . . I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you:
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. [emphasis added]

Jessamyn West / The Friendly Persuasion (1945):
"He, a live man, to die. He extended his hand, recalling its cunning, marveling at the way stiff, unpliable bones could be so cushioned and strung together as to be capable of music, of grafting a tree, of lifting a foal from it's mother's torn flesh -- and that hand to be dust. And the enemy present . . . He saw objects two ways, now, both as more beautiful and more pitiable: those which would stay, endure beyond men, stones, trees, the moving air, had new beauty, that of their own endurance and of his leaving; but men and women were more pitiable . . . Man's a sizeable hulk reared - up on his wagon seat and pulled about the earth by horses; dead, no more'n a spoonful of dust, not enough, spread thin, to take a small - sized horse track" (147 - 150). [emphasis added]

Jack Schaefer / Shane (1949 novel / 1953 film):
In the iconic closing scene, Shane bids farewell and rides off into the valley, ignoring young Joey's desperate cries of "Shane, come back!"

In his memoir 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal writes of the equally iconic moment in his childhood when none other than the legendary Billie Holiday (who was friends with his father) took him to see Shane at the movie theater. As the movie draws to a close and Shane rides off into the sunset, "Miss Billie whispered in my ear, 'He ain't never coming back'" (48).

Alan Sillitoe / "The Fishing Boat Picture" (1959):
"Then optimism rides out of the darkness like a knight in armour. If you loved her... (of course I bloody-well did)... then you both did the only thing possible if it was to be remembered as love. Now didn't you? Knight in armour goes back into blackness. Yes, I cry, but neither of us did anything about it, and that's the trouble." [emphasis added]

Iris Murdoch / The Black Prince (1973):
"The whole room breathed the flat horror of genuine mortality, dull and spiritless and final . . . (38)
"You understand nothing of -- the horror -- no wonder you can write real books -- you don't see -- the horror -- (224, emphasis added)
"The evening was overcast . . . I could smell dust, as if the quiet tedious streets all around me had dissolved into endless dunes of dust. I thought about this morning and how we had seemed to have all the time in the world. And now there seemed to be no more time. I also thought that if only I had had the wit . . . (285)
I awoke to a grey awful spotty early morning light which made the unfamiliar room present in a ghastly way. The furniture was humped shapelessly about me . . . Everything seemed to be covered with soiled dust sheets. . . . I experienced horror, then memory." (341)

William Stafford / "A Ritual To Read To Each Other"
(1977, or somewhat earlier):

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. [emphasis added]

Kansas / "Dust in the Wind" (1977)
Click to listen:
I close my eyes
Only for a moment and the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes with curiosity
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

Now don't hang on
Nothin' lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind

Dust Bowl

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, July 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com