The Interlude (listening)
The spike of sea holly is very particular to me-- it’s a kind of thistle, often a mysterious blue or purple with an undertone of metallic shine so it looks like it is mailed or in some kind of armor. While it does grow on beaches (there is some on Alki) it is unlikely to be growing below the tideline-- so I tend to read it semi-allegoically as an emblem of growing independence while still at risk of being washed away.
For the first time I heard the colors: first blue and green (waves) then red (clefts in the rocks). This repeats a very common primary color triad in Woolf; well, she often repeats red, blue, and yellow, but red blue and green is the painter’s version. [1] Then a bit later the birds have breasts of canary and rose (my paper on color in Woolf and O’Keeffe was titled “it was Yellow and Pink” -- as that color combo was particularly evident in post-impressionist painting.)
Speaking of color… then there is the movement INTO the house, and then INTO the lump of emerald green glass. This lump appears several times in Woolf, so often that I suspect it of sitting on the mantelpiece at Monk’s House. Aside from the deep dive into color, what struck me anew here was the phrase “pure green like a stoneless fruit”. Aside from giving me a very vivid image of a kind of depthless paperweight, the idea of a “stoneless fruit” seemed so resonant with the stage the children were moving into: beginning to ripen, but not yet fully coalesced into a solid core of being.
Another thing that struck me -- faintly, like the memory of bells, was the re-evocation of geometrical shapes from the first Interlude, but here set into a kind of dichotomy: the fan shape and the pools of light, the stripes of shadow and the mosaic of sparks. (Someone has written a paper on Woolf and particle wave/theory.. I think it may be Gillian Beer. Let me look. Nope. I’ll keep thinking)
Of course I also responded to the appearance of the flowers, which open from buds, have green veins, quiver, and have clappers inside their white walls. I must admit I am stumped as to what these might be. (Canterbury bells, foxgloves, hyacinth, and white tulips don’t open at the arrival of the sun; the clematis and passionflower which grew up the sides of Talland house were purple, and also didn’t open or have clappers) Tempted to see them as not real flowers but another abstract allegory of the characters’ developmental stage: buds opening into flower, still white/ unstained, their voices dim, contained inside protective walls….
The Episode
Once again we begin with Bernard. Is this always true? Must check…(all episodes begin wi B, except 5(P’s death) wh begins wi N, and 6 wh starts wi L)… interesting that the narrative is always begun by male characters.
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As I lay in bed, listening to Chapter two, temporarily resigned from the army of the upright, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Nevertheless, I was stuck by how I didn’t really need my highlighting aids to tell who was talking. Of course she makes that clear every time she switches speakers, but in my light-headed roving, I often didn’t notice until some phrase or attitude or preoccupation made me grasp on to a certainty: that must be Bernard because it is about words and writing, and language; that must be Neville because he is talking about the Classics; that must be Louis because he is talking about roots; here is Susan, spiteful and strong willed, immersed in the country; Jinny always whirling and flaming; and Rhoda without a face but wrapt in fantasies of queens. I began to see this Chapter as being about identity-- each character rising on their own firm stalk, except for Rhoda who cannot find her face.
This growing into selfhood also is accompanied by a recognition of the others. In Chapter One they seem aware of each other’s actions, but in Chapter Two they make comments about each other’s identities and emotions. Bernard comments on Neville and Louis’s admiration for the “horrid little boys who are so beautiful” (34). Rhoda like Susan better than Jinny because she is “more resolute and [is] less ambitious of distinction than Jinny” (29).
Looking at my plot summary for Chapter Two, I am also struck by how carefully this Episode is structured: Boys leave for school on train, girls at school; boys at chapel and cricket, girls getting ready for tennis; boys cricket and masculinity, girls longing for vacation and future as women; boys getting ready for vacation, girls on train; boys on train. Very neat and symmetrical and circular.
Reponding to yr response:
Nine chapters= nine months!!! What a gift. I had NEVER made that connection. Thank you.
Yes, I too was very aware of Bernard making sequences/ stories as his way of controlling reality. In that way he strikes me as very like Woolf. I love what Neville says about him rolling his bread into pellets as a child.. Reminds me of cotton wool. But. Enough.
[1] (I wrote a paper, never published, for a conference in 2005 on the early use of color in VW and O’Keeffe. Here’s a relevant excerpt and a link to the whole thing.
The short stories Woolf wrote between 1917 and 1922 show similar patterns of experimentation. It is not just that she is using color much more frequently than in Night and Day, she is also using much more abstract, non-mimetic color; her color combinations are now clearly informed by theoretical discussions of color theory, and she is beginning to use color as a kind of formal element, playing with the rhythm and frequencies as if she is composing a form of color-music. The most obvious example of Woolf's new interest in abstract color is her new near-obsession with the primary triad of red, yellow, and blue. In the eleven short pieces that make up Monday or Tuesday the combination appears no less than eight times. Its six manifestations in "Kew Gardens" establish the triad's significance as a metaphor for the prismatic multiplicity of light, as the red, yellow, and blue colors of the petals are picked up and refracted onto the back of the snail, into a drop of water, and finally suffused throughout the atmosphere (CSF 90, 91, 95). Woolf obviously liked this effect, using it again in "The Evening Party," to describe the "yellow and red panes" of light the ocean liners cast upon the blue ocean (CSF 96) and also in "An Unwritten Novel," where the roofs of Eastborne are "striped red and yellow, with blue-black slating" (CSF 114).
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