vswpaper's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finished Jacob's Room, started Mrs. Dalloway

I found the "entire plant" passage, alongside another one where she's talking about her perception of the world and how she believes emotions can persist beyond the person feeling them, attached to places and things. Not sure if the latter can work into my paper, but it's a pretty good reflection of the method of The Waves. I found a couple other good things too.

And then I read Kew Gardens and Monday or Tuesday, I think before starting Jacob's Room. Which was hard going at first, but got better. It jumps around so much, and that's especially hard to navigate at the beginning. I think the jumpiness is a fault, really, and the JR is more of a bridge to the later books that a success on its own. Toward the end I was just marching forward to finish. Still, it wasn't as bad as I remembered; but come to think of it, no wonder I had such a hard time getting started last time. If you don't come at it with a point of view, it's not going to give up very much, and it's certainly a poor place to start formulating ideas (unless maybe you were going to talk about the book itself).

Then on to Mrs. Dalloway, and I had a qualm about whether I should just be filling in on the bus with the Bell biography or should actually try to get to the corresponding part of her life before I read Mrs. D. Which has ended up being the plan--and the plan may be partly a shirking relief to me.

A note about JR: the last sentence starts the path so nicely to the last of Mrs. D and the last of To the Lighthouse, and then maybe to the last of The Waves, but I'm going to have to work that out a little better.

One potential wrinkle I think I have worked out is the inclusion in Septimus Warren Smith's passages of the VSW's personal experience of birds singing in Greek. The personal (and very feminine, since VSW felt herself so) attribute is a defect, and Septimus is rebuked as being unmanly. So it's not really integrated for him, but is actually a problem. Only later does a man display feminine attributes and gain by them.

8:59 p.m. - 2006-10-15

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next