Windows Framed (9/26/12)

In his book Cinema 1: The Movement Image, Gilles Deleuze intermingles film studies with philosophy to study the idea of movement in a film. In the section titled “Frame and Shot,” he introduces the idea of framing. He states,

We will call the determination of a closed system, a relatively closed system which includes everything which is present in the image - sets, characters and props - framing. The frame therefore forms a set which has a great number of parts, that is of elements, which themselves form sub-sets. It can be broken down. (Deleuze 12)

The frame as a whole contains all that can be seen within, and what can be seen can be broken into sub-sets to explain the composition.

Not only can these items be sub-grouped, but a frame may contain another or many other frames. Of these “frames in frames,” Deleuze says,

As a general rule, the powers of Nature are not framed in the same way as people or things, and individuals are not framed in the same way as crowds, and sub-elements are not framed in the same way as terms, so that there are many different frames in the frame. Doors, windows, box office windows, skylights, car windows, mirrors, are all frames in frames. (14)

Frames may be infinitely framed. One only needs to think of looking in a mirror that is reflecting a mirror to see this concept.

But with the frame, the viewer is not only allowed to see what can be seen, but is prohibited from seeing what is outside the frame (at least the greatest frame).

In Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, the window frame is used in several different ways. The first section of To the Lighthouse is titled “The Window,” and this section provides a frame for the novel, and the over thirty references to a window or a pane within this section provide a frame for perspective.

In some cases, the window serves as a frame to what is contained, what resides inside with the viewer, such as when James sees “his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, [and saying] “it won’t be fine” (Woolf 8); when “Charles Tansley, clapping his hands together as he stood at the window with [Mrs. Ramsay’s] husband” (Woolf 11); or as Mr. Ramsay “at the window … bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle James’s bare calf with a sprig of something” (Woolf 35). The physical beings are on the same side of the window as the viewer, so that an illusion is created by the window frame of contained image, much like a portrait. Unfortunately for James, this containment with his father results in extreme negative feelings toward Mr. Ramsay.

In other cases, the window serves as a boundary, or a partition between two people. Woolf even illustrates this boundary when she uses parentheticals to mention the windows, as in these three passages: “(as she sat in the window which opened on the terrace)” (Woolf19); “(she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights)” (Woolf 107); “(she was looking at the window)” (Woolf 112). By setting the mentions of the window within parentheses, Woolf creates the same boundary that the windows create.

But even this boundary can be transcended with the eyes; the physical body cannot move through the (closed) window, but the eye can see beyond to the other side of the window, at least what the frame of the window allows it see. Several times throughout the novel, Mrs. Ramsay and James are viewed through the window, generally by Mr. Ramsay and Lily. Mr. Ramsay spies the two as he walks along the terrace:

He stopped to light his pipe, looked once at his wife and son in the window, and as one raises one’s eyes from a page in an express train and sees a farm, a tree, a cluster of cottages as an illustration, a confirmation of something on the printed page to which one returns, fortified, and satisfied, so without his distinguishing either his son or his wife, the sight of them fortified him and satisfied him and consecrated his effort to arrive at a perfectly clear understanding of the problem which now engaged the energies of his splendid mind. (Woolf  36)

And later, as he was “stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far, far away, … his wife and son, together, in the window” (Woolf 37) and imagining himself the hero who “puts his armor off and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son” (Woolf 39). In these instances, Mr. Ramsay not only sees Mrs. Ramsay and James within the frame, he is also separated from them, relegated to the outside.

Lily views the two while she is painting: “Even while she looked at the mass, at the line, at the colour, at Mrs. Ramsay sitting in the window with James, she kept a feeler on her surroundings lest some one should creep up, and suddenly she should find her picture looked at” (Woolf 21); and “she saw … Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending” (Woolf 50). After seeing the two in the window, Lily decides that this is the view she should paint. This makes Lily’s painting a frame of a frame: the boundaries of the canvas form one frame, the edges of the painted window form another.

But interestingly, Mrs. Ramsay seems to focus on the importance of leaving windows open, doing away with the boundary of the window pane, and creating a space that can be traversed. When giving instruction to guests, she says “they must keep the windows open and the doors shut” (Woolf 17). And when she is contemplating the house, she takes inventory of open doors and windows: “the hall door was open; it sounded as if the bedroom doors were open; and certainly the window on the landing was open, for that she had opened herself. That windows should be open, and doors shut — simple as it was, could none of them remember it?” (Woolf 31) Mrs. Ramsay’s makes an impression on Lily as she “opened bedroom windows. She shut doors” (Woolf 52). By maintaining open windows (and closed doors), Mrs. Ramsay allows the inside and outside to mix, at least ethereally, erasing the boundary of a closed window pane.

Works Cited

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.  London: Athlone Press, 1986.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Mark Hussey, annot. and intro. 1927: NY: Harcourt, 2005.

Room for All (10/3/12)

While A Room of One’s Own is generally viewed as a strong feminist writing, after reading the famous Woolf text, I was left with some questions: What kind of feminism does the text support? Does the text argue for equality, or does it advocate a “separate but equal” attitude? Can women only be equal to men if they step into masculine shoes?

Woolf may not be arguing for a Hegelian synthesis (mascinine/femuline?), or a deconstruction of the masculine/feminine dichotomy, but does having a “room of one’s own” do anything to promote equality? Some quotes from A Room of One’s Own do show an attempt to equalize men and women, for instance, Woolf tells the reader that men have difficulties similar to women when she says, “[t]hey too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with. Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great” (Woolf 38). And she muses toward the end of the essay about a synthesis of the sexes in the following passage:

The obvious reason would be that it is natural for the sexes to co-operate. One has a profound, if irrational, instinct in favour of the theory that the union of man and woman makes for the greatest satisfaction, the most complete happiness. But the sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness? And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’s brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating. If one is a man, still the woman part of his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought. But it would he well to test what one meant by manwomanly, and conversely by woman-manly, by pausing and looking at a book or two. (Woolf 96-7)

But rather than disperse with the hierarchy, and create an equality of the sexes, she instead leans toward a unity (which does not preclude that one is inferior to the other, only that the two come together) which leads to androgyny.

But Woolf does remind us of the existing hierarchy when she states, “ here again we come within range of that very interesting and obscure masculine complex which has had so much influence upon the woman’s movement; that deep-seated desire, not so much that she shall be inferior as that he shall be superior, which plants him wherever one looks” (Woolf 54). At this point, Woolf changes the perspective of the dichotomy – she isn’t inferior, but he is superior – which only leads to more activity on the part of the male.

The room is an isolated space, much like the patriarchal buildings, isolated from others, the Other, and the other sex. Whether or not the room belongs to a man or a woman, it is still designed to be isolating, keeping an other out. For equality, all rooms should be shareable, accessible, open to all. (Yes, I understand the need for a quiet space to write, and am not suggesting that anyone try to write in a crowded room.) But the connection of feminine with the room does not suggest that men and women are equal, only that by having a room of her own, a woman is now hierarchically above a man as she possesses a space that keeps him out. This overturns the masculine/feminine dichotomy, but we’re still left with a dichotomy.

Also, by having a room of her own, isn’t a woman just taking on masculine traits? As Tracy Seeley says in her article “Flights of Fancy: Spatial Digression and Storytelling in A Room of One's Own,” when explain an article by Julie Solomon, “A Room advocates gaining power as patriarchy defines it: through acquiring property and capital" (34). A woman is not becoming equal to a man, she is becoming like a man. This does not erase the dichotomy, but only moves certain individual from one position to another. Which leaves us still without equality.

Seeley, Tracy. “Flights of Fancy: Spatial Digression and Storytelling in A Room of One's Own.”  Locating Woolf: The Politics of Space and Place. Ed. Anna Snaitu and Michael Whitworth. NY& London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Susan Gubar, annot. and intro. 1929: NY: NY: Harcourt, 2005.

Between the Borders of the Acts

In “‘Dispersed Are We’:Mirroring and National Identity in Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts,” Galia Benzimen examines the role of mirroring and national identity in pre-war England. She uses Lacan’s and Winnicott’s mirror stages to explain how Miss La Trobe has become the mother, using the mirrors in the pageant to help the audience form their identity as a united self. She claims,

“my claim is that although [Woolf] indeed deconstructs collectivity in Between the Acts and represents it as dispersed, fragmentary, illusory and potentially totalitarian, her consistent figurative portrayal of the community and the nation as an individual self foregrounds a contrasted yearning to see the dispersed fragments as belonging to a unified whole, which may save the national self from extinction at a moment when the apocalypse of German invasion still might seem an imminent event” (Benziman 55).

But Woolf seems to use mirrors throughout the text to show fracturing and fragmenting.

An important distinction between characters and their use of mirrors is the mention of “eyes.” Within the text, Woolf mentions “eyes” fifty-one times; ironically, she replaces “eyes” in a well-known saying with “books” when Isa remembers and quotes, “Books are the mirrors of the soul” (Woolf 12, 14). But this replacement does tie together mirrors, eyes, and literature as important themes in the text.

                While Woolf mentions mirrors sixteen times in the work, there are only two times that she seems to use the mirror to reflect a whole, or a soul. The first is when Isa is looking into the mirror and thinking of the gentleman farmer:

Inside the glass, in her eyes, she saw what she had felt overnight for the ravaged, the silent, the romantic gentleman farmer. “In love,” was in her eyes. But outside, on the washstand, on the dressing-table, among the silver boxes and tooth-brushes, was the other love; love for her husband, the stockbroker —“The father of my children,” she added, slipping into the cliché conveniently provided by fiction. Inner love was in the eyes; outer love on the dressing-table. But what feeling was it that stirred in her now when above the looking-glass, out of doors, she saw coming across the lawn the perambulator; two nurses; and her little boy George, lagging behind?” (Woolf 10)

Woolf uses the mirror in this case much like Foucault discusses, creating a utopia (a place that is not a place) inside the mirror, where Isa is “in love” and felt “inner love.” This love is much like the place inside the mirror, a love that is not love. But we see the duality, the whole, of Isa by being exposed to both her inner and her outer love.

The second mention of eye in a mirror comes when Mrs. Swithen is showing William around the house.

Standing by the cupboard in the corner he saw her reflected in the glass. Cut off from their bodies, their eyes smiled, their bodiless eyes, at their eyes in the glass” (Woolf 49).

This comes at a time when William feels that he is seeing Mrs. Swithen as a whole person, past and present. Again, the eyes paired with the mirror shows the reader a unity.

On the other hand, the rest of the uses of mirror in the text only show a fragment of a person. Mrs. Manresa is used four times to impart the importance of fracturing and fragmenting. When she is waiting for the pageant to start, “Mrs. Manresa had out her mirror and attended to her face” (Woolf 121). Then during the pageant, “Mrs. Manresa had out her mirror and lipstick and attended to her lips and nose” (Woolf 92). Neither of these occurrences mentions the eyes, and in fact only mentions the face, lips, and nose. The third mention comes during the “Ourselves” act of the pageant, when members of the audience “evaded or shaded themselves — save Mrs. Manresa who, facing herself in the glass, used it as a glass; had out her mirror; powdered her nose; and moved one curl, disturbed by the breeze, to its place” (Woolf 126). Not only is she participating in the reflection of the audience by the actors, she contributes her own mirror for reflection, a mirror that has only shown the reader fragments of Mrs. Manresa. And finally, after the play, When Giles is saying goodbye to Mrs. Manresa, he notices that, “But alas, sunset light was unsympathetic to her make-up; plated it looked, not deeply interfused” (Woolf 136). For all of her primping and preening, she is still fragmented, not interfused, not a whole.

               

As for the last act of the play, the actors use “[a]nything that’s bright enough to reflect, presumably, ourselves” (Woolf 125). Although “ourselves” would imply a unity of sorts – a group of individuals acting as a whole – the rest of the passage refers to only fragments of each individual: “Here a nose . . . There a skirt . . . Then trousers only . . . Now perhaps a face. . . . Ourselves? But that’s cruel. To snap us as we are, before we’ve had time to assume . . . And only, too, in parts. . . . That’s what’s so distorting and upsetting and utterly unfair” (Woolf 125); “And the audience saw themselves, not whole by any means, but at any rate sitting still” (Woolf 126). Woolf refers the audience  throughout the text as “scraps and fragments,” or “orts, scraps and fragments” (Woolf 84, 127, 128 (twice), 131, 146) and there is no change in this by the end of the novel. Only three pages from the end, Isa remembers only the “orts, scraps and fragments” (Woolf 146) message from the play.

Works Cited

Benziman, Galia. “‘Dispersed Are We’:Mirroring and National Identity in Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts.” Journal of Narrative Theory 36.1 (2006) 53-71.

Woolf, Virginia. Between the Acts. Melba Cuddy-Keane, annot. And intro. 1941: NY: Harcourt, 2008.

Cradle of Home (9/19/12)

Perhaps it is because I have been sick for the majority of this semester that Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space has resonated with me. Although Bachelard is talking about childhood homes when he says “for our house is our corner of the world... as has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word" (4), being surrounded by any space that feels like home is comforting.  Or, as Bachelard says later in the essay, "the house is a large cradle" (7). While I am not living in the house that I grew up in, my house is still a comforting cradle, especially when I’m not feeling well. I grew up in the North and now my house is in the South – two very different climates. But the “four walls” of both houses serve(d) as a protection from the outside world. It is not the plaster and brick walls that make us feel protected; instead “we shall see the imagination build ‘walls’ of impalpable shadows, comfort itself with the illusion of protection” (Bachelard 5). Of course, the opposite may happen as well, and the walls may become a prison of sorts. But for this blog, I want to focus on the comfort of home. Because even Bachelard would say “the chief benefit of the house: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace” (6).

This is not a simple relationship between house and housed. “The house of memories becomes psychologically complex. Associated with the nooks and corners of solitude are the bedroom and the living room in which the leading characters held sway” (Bachelard 14). While the kitchen and the dining room could elicit memories of gatherings, energy, celebrations, or special occasions, the more private rooms in the house such as the bedroom or the favorite spot on the couch in the living room is where we retreat for healing, recovery, and time alone. (Yes, gatherings often spread to the living room, but this room can be used for privacy as well. Especially when there’s a comfy couch, and warm blanket, and soft lighting perfect for reading, writing, or reflecting. Also, specific places with the house can elicit different daydreams and different feelings; some happy and protective, others might be frightening and suffocating.  While “each one of [the house’s] nooks and corners [is] a resting-place for daydreaming…and often the resting-place particularize[s] the daydream (Bachelard 15), sometimes it is not a place that brings forth strong emotions, but instead an object within the house.

For instance, for Virginia Woolf in “A Sketch of the Past,” it is the mirror that prompts shame (68). Woolf reflects that a “strong feeling of guilt seemed naturally attached to it. But why was this so?” (68). Within a page, the reader is told of an incident involving a

slab outside the dining room door for standing dishes upon. Once when I was very small Gerald Duckworth lifted me onto this, and as I sat there he began to explore my body. I can remember the feel of his hand going under my clothes; going firmly and steadily lower and lower. I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts. But it did not stop. His hand explored my private parts too. I remember resenting, disliking it- what is the word for so dumb and mixed a feeling? It must have been strong, since I still recall it. (Woolf 69)

Ironically, it is not the slab outside the dining room door, or the dining room itself which makes Woolf feel ashamed or guilty; it is a looking glass that was hung in the hall with the slab. The violation of a young girl is not attached to a nook or cranny in the home, but to an object hanging on the wall. (Psychologically, we could delve into the idea of the mirror reflecting her shame or showing her a world she doesn’t expect, but this is a humble blog and I am no psychologist.)

On the other hand, Woolf does associate a space within the house that was comforting: the nursery. Her first memory is

of lying half asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then break blind draw its little acorn across the floor as the wind blew the blind out. It is of lying and hearing this splash and seeing this light, and feeling, it is almost impossible that I should be here; of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive. (Woolf 65)

Woolf does mention objects in the room: the bed, the blind, and the light, but she doesn’t refer to these things, she refers to “being here” – the nursery – with feelings of pureness and ecstasy. It was what she “felt in the nursery at St Ives” (Woolf 65), not what she felt being surrounded by the objects that stayed with her.

Once again we can turn to Bachelard and his view of the house. He says

Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated… [and]even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell. (Bachelard 8, 10)

 Works cited Bachelard, Gaston. Poetics of Space. Translater Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon P, 1964. Woolf, Virginia. “A Sketch of the Past.”  Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings. Ed Jeanne Schulkind. NY: Harcourt, 1976.