In Mrs. Dalloway, shell-shocked Septimus hears birds sing at him in Greek, which I've read was her own experience during a depressive episode. I'm glad she was able to write what she did--and that we can treat mental illness a little bit better now.
Showing posts with label Virginia Woolf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virginia Woolf. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Virginia
The Writer's Almanac tells me that 70 years ago today, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse.
In Mrs. Dalloway, shell-shocked Septimus hears birds sing at him in Greek, which I've read was her own experience during a depressive episode. I'm glad she was able to write what she did--and that we can treat mental illness a little bit better now.
In Mrs. Dalloway, shell-shocked Septimus hears birds sing at him in Greek, which I've read was her own experience during a depressive episode. I'm glad she was able to write what she did--and that we can treat mental illness a little bit better now.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Let's Talk About The Art Of Manliness
Recently I found a site called The Art of Manliness. (I feel as surreptitious reading this site as I did reading wedding blogs back in the day--except I think reading this is healthier.) It has an awesome name going for it and it has nearly 72,000 followers on Facebook. It is, indeed, all about manliness.
I like how the author defines "manliness" here, equating it with virtue (although the site is also full of tutorials on such topics as how to escape a riptide), and I like that the site encourages dressing appropriately, cleaning one's car for a date, and generally being capable and decent.
But for all the virtue, it still seems mired in traditional gender roles, which I'm guilty of, too: Is my thinking a man should know things about cars and home repair and riptides any different from a man thinking I should know things about baking and mending and grocery shopping? Are we still mired in gender roles because men and women are fundamentally different, so there will always be "manliness" and "womanliness" instead of "humanness"?
It all reminds me of a quote from To The Lighthouse, where everyone is at dinner and the young male student is insecure and wants to join the conversation and the single lady painter notices:
There is a code of behaviour she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may...relieve...his vanity, his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there, smiling.
I like how the author defines "manliness" here, equating it with virtue (although the site is also full of tutorials on such topics as how to escape a riptide), and I like that the site encourages dressing appropriately, cleaning one's car for a date, and generally being capable and decent.
But for all the virtue, it still seems mired in traditional gender roles, which I'm guilty of, too: Is my thinking a man should know things about cars and home repair and riptides any different from a man thinking I should know things about baking and mending and grocery shopping? Are we still mired in gender roles because men and women are fundamentally different, so there will always be "manliness" and "womanliness" instead of "humanness"?
It all reminds me of a quote from To The Lighthouse, where everyone is at dinner and the young male student is insecure and wants to join the conversation and the single lady painter notices:
There is a code of behaviour she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may...relieve...his vanity, his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there, smiling.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Virginia Woolf Quote Of The Day, Day Two
From A Room of One's Own again (yes, it's a cop out, but at least it's not a cat picture):
What is meant by ‘reality’? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech—and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us…For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life.
What is meant by ‘reality’? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech—and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us…For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Virginia Woolf Quote Of The Day
From "A Room of One's Own":
The whole structure, it is obvious, thinking back on any famous novel, is one of infinite complexity, because it is thus made up of so many different judgments, of so many different kinds of emotion. The wonder is that any book so composed holds together for more than a year or two, or can possibly mean to the English reader what it means for the Russian or the Chinese. But they do hold together occasionally very remarkably. And what holds them together in these rare instances of survival (I was thinking of War and Peace) is something that one calls integrity, though it has nothing to do with paying one’s bills or behaving honorably in an emergency. What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth. Yes, one feels, I should never have thought that this could be so; I have never known people behaving like that. But you have convinced me that so it is, so it happens.
The whole structure, it is obvious, thinking back on any famous novel, is one of infinite complexity, because it is thus made up of so many different judgments, of so many different kinds of emotion. The wonder is that any book so composed holds together for more than a year or two, or can possibly mean to the English reader what it means for the Russian or the Chinese. But they do hold together occasionally very remarkably. And what holds them together in these rare instances of survival (I was thinking of War and Peace) is something that one calls integrity, though it has nothing to do with paying one’s bills or behaving honorably in an emergency. What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth. Yes, one feels, I should never have thought that this could be so; I have never known people behaving like that. But you have convinced me that so it is, so it happens.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Happy Belated Vernal Equinox
I never had a chance to post yesterday, so I'll make up for it today with some real highbrow literature. This is Virginia Woolf, from the middle section of To The Lighthouse, titled, appropriately enough, "Time Passes." I think of it whenever, well, time passes.
But what, after all, is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of a wave.
Never made it to the demolition derrby over the weekend. However, there will be chariot races this Saturday and Sunday, at the same arena (Golden Spike). Why we don't all move to Ogden, I don't know--they have derbys, chariot races, refineries, trains.
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