Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. Harcourt, 2005.
According to Julia Briggs in Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, the character of the woman artist in To The Lighthouse was originally called Sophie Briscoe, and was described as “a kindly, rosy lady with a taste for hedgerows and cottages.” (166) Very soon, though, Woolf had re-created her artist as Lily Briscoe, a woman artist who embodied the characteristics of Woolf herself; modern, dedicated to her art, and driven by her need to paint, just as Woolf was driven by her need to write. Briggs examines the conflict that exists within Lily, between remaining faithful to her artistic nature and the societal pressure she feels to conform. Lily actually feels pressured to conform on two fronts. She strives to maintain her artistic vision, which differs radically from the popular style of the day, and she grapples with the societal expectations that a woman should be willing to give herself up to love and marriage. With respect to Lily’s artistic vision, Briggs observes, “Her art is at once agony and ecstasy, a rich inner resource and a refuge from social discomfort. She finds the act of painting all-absorbing, and the need to be true to her vision overrides any concern for its future survival.” (180) When Lily’s thoughts turn to love and marriage, Briggs notes that the contradictions in Lily’s mind mirror those of Woolf’s, “Lily Briscoe, like her author, rejects Mrs. Ramsay’s gospel of love and marriage, yet at the same time she could recognize its appeal, could ‘feel violently two opposite things at the same time…It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love…also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions’.” (172) Briggs points out that To The Lighthouse was an extremely personal book for Woolf, perhaps more so that any other of her works. Briggs writes, “Never had she put so much of herself into her writing. Not only had she re-created her parents and family life at Talland House, but in Lily Briscoe she drew her fullest portrait of the artist, a self-portrait that revealed how intensely and exclusively she lived out her writing.” (179)
Lily Briscoe embodies many of the most important, and most difficult, elements of Virginia Woolf’s life. Briggs does a very credible job of summarizing these various elements and observing the ways in which Woolf has incorporated them into Lily. Briggs also notes the connection between Lily Briscoe and the writer/character that Woolf will go on to imagine: “Lily is not merely a self-portrait; she is a portrait of the artist as woman, anticipating the portrait of the woman writer who would demand A Room of One’s Own, two years later.” (180) It is no secret that Woolf struggled mightily to balance the various roles of her life with her artistic drive. Woolf frequently seemed to feel that life intruded upon her art, and she despaired of ever finding a satisfactory equilibrium. Rather than creating Lily as an ideal, a woman artist uncompromised by these conflicts, Briggs shows us that Woolf invested Lily with her own efforts to reconcile the contradictions: “But life and art cannot be separated, and Lily recognizes that art feeds upon life, while life, in turn may be ‘susceptible, like a picture, to arrangement & order’.” (172) Many of these thoughts and feelings run through Lily’s mind while she is painting. It is as if the creative juices that allow Lily’s painting to flow also activate some kind of mental flow, as if Lily is an open channel through which a cascade pours. The stream of thoughts and the stream of painting seem to be inextricably linked, influencing and shaping each other interchangeably, just as Woolf’s narrative stream links her characters.
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
An Artist Unencumbered By Marriage
Levenson, Michael H. Modernism and the Fate of Individuality: Character and Novelistic Form from Conrad to Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Michael Levenson draws some very intriguing parallels between Lily’s creative process and what would have been her experience as a single woman at that time. He writes that Woolf’s portrayal of Lily is an attempt to “re-imagine the view of an unmarried woman” (185); a woman who does not accept society’s view of singleness as a detriment. Levenson suggests that Woolf created Lily as a woman who sees herself as free from the constraints of marriage and who uses art to sublimate and purify her sexual appetite: “Art is a solution to the problem of desire – not because it eliminates the press of want, but because it changes the objects of desire and the terms of satisfaction.” (191) Levenson also examines the social implications of marriage for a woman at that time, and the limitations that marriage placed on the creative process of a female artist. Levenson directs our attention to the characterizations of Lily and Mrs. Ramsay, and explores the different experiences of these two women, one living within a marriage and one living without. In Lily’s life, because she is unconstrained by marriage, she is able to develop her life as she desires. This is not to say that Lily’s life is better or easier that Mrs. Ramsay’s, but simply more her own. Levenson notes Woolf’s alignment of the act of composing a painting and the act of composing a life when he writes, “To identify Lily with the line drawn in the middle, as everything encourages us to do, is to see her no longer simply as compositor of the work, but as a thing composed. It is to recognize, in Woolf’s term, that ‘The whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art.’” (215)
Levenson does an excellent job of reviewing and connecting several works Woolf produced around the time she wrote To The Lighthouse. These works include critiques of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and an essay Woolf wrote in 1926 entitled “Life and The Novelist”, among others. Woolf’s characterization of Lily shows us a woman who is more comfortable living within than without. Lily becomes completely absorbed and hyper-aware of sensation when she is painting, consumed in a way that some women reserve for lovers and children. When Lily’s creative process is interrupted by the outside world, as when Mr. Ramsay is imposing on her for sympathy, she feels suffocated and resentful. One of the primary threads running through Woolf’s work is her struggle to balance the life of a woman in a marriage and in society with the desire to live as a solitary aesthete, pure and nobly isolate. It is quite interesting to consider how different Woolf’s life might have been if she had been born in 1941, instead of ending her life in that year. How she might have been influenced by the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and the great strides made by women in the late 20th century? Would she have created a life that could be merged freely with her art? Would she have felt more able to disdain the conventions of marriage and societal expectation? While Levenson does not attempt to answer these questions, he does provide an intriguing perspective and a great deal of food for thought.
Michael Levenson draws some very intriguing parallels between Lily’s creative process and what would have been her experience as a single woman at that time. He writes that Woolf’s portrayal of Lily is an attempt to “re-imagine the view of an unmarried woman” (185); a woman who does not accept society’s view of singleness as a detriment. Levenson suggests that Woolf created Lily as a woman who sees herself as free from the constraints of marriage and who uses art to sublimate and purify her sexual appetite: “Art is a solution to the problem of desire – not because it eliminates the press of want, but because it changes the objects of desire and the terms of satisfaction.” (191) Levenson also examines the social implications of marriage for a woman at that time, and the limitations that marriage placed on the creative process of a female artist. Levenson directs our attention to the characterizations of Lily and Mrs. Ramsay, and explores the different experiences of these two women, one living within a marriage and one living without. In Lily’s life, because she is unconstrained by marriage, she is able to develop her life as she desires. This is not to say that Lily’s life is better or easier that Mrs. Ramsay’s, but simply more her own. Levenson notes Woolf’s alignment of the act of composing a painting and the act of composing a life when he writes, “To identify Lily with the line drawn in the middle, as everything encourages us to do, is to see her no longer simply as compositor of the work, but as a thing composed. It is to recognize, in Woolf’s term, that ‘The whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art.’” (215)
Levenson does an excellent job of reviewing and connecting several works Woolf produced around the time she wrote To The Lighthouse. These works include critiques of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and an essay Woolf wrote in 1926 entitled “Life and The Novelist”, among others. Woolf’s characterization of Lily shows us a woman who is more comfortable living within than without. Lily becomes completely absorbed and hyper-aware of sensation when she is painting, consumed in a way that some women reserve for lovers and children. When Lily’s creative process is interrupted by the outside world, as when Mr. Ramsay is imposing on her for sympathy, she feels suffocated and resentful. One of the primary threads running through Woolf’s work is her struggle to balance the life of a woman in a marriage and in society with the desire to live as a solitary aesthete, pure and nobly isolate. It is quite interesting to consider how different Woolf’s life might have been if she had been born in 1941, instead of ending her life in that year. How she might have been influenced by the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and the great strides made by women in the late 20th century? Would she have created a life that could be merged freely with her art? Would she have felt more able to disdain the conventions of marriage and societal expectation? While Levenson does not attempt to answer these questions, he does provide an intriguing perspective and a great deal of food for thought.
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