Abel, Elizabeth. Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis (Women in Culture and Society Series). Reprint Edition. University Of Chicago Press, 1993.
In Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis, Elizabeth Abel presents us with a fascinating perspective on the works of Virginia Woolf. Abel shows the connections between Woolf and some of the prevailing theories of psychoanalysis, specifically drawing parallels between Woolf’s work and the work of both Sigmund Freud and of Melanie Klein, a pioneer in the field of child psychology. Abel’s examination of To The Lighthouse reveals the association of the Oedipal theories of Freud in the characterizations of James and Cam, while the characterization of Lily Briscoe reflects the theories of Klein. Both Freud and Klein developed theories about the formation and the resolution of one’s attachment to the parent figure, although Klein focused more specifically on the mother-infant bond, and its impact on the formation of a person’s sense of self. In 1925, the year in which Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway and two years prior to the publication of To The Lighthouse, Klein presented a series of lectures to the British Psycho-Analytic Society. The topic of these lectures was an examination of the power of the mother over her children. Instead of delivering the lectures at a university or in some other public space, Klein delivered her lectures in the home of Adrian and Karin Stephen, Virginia Woolf’s brother and sister-in-law. Abel finds that the influence of Klein’s theories can be seen through Woolf’s construction of Lily Briscoe: “Lily finds in the ‘language’ of painting (both the spatial relations on the canvas and the discourse they represent) a means of representing the boundary negotiations that characterize the mother-infant bond.” (69) Additionally, Abel suggests that the differences between Cam’s relations to her mother, when contrasted to the relations between Lily and Mrs. Ramsay, further highlight Woolf’s attempt to resolve some of her own conflicting feelings about her mother: “The ongoing negotiation of mother-child boundaries also differentiates Lily from Cam. The place of the daughter that was occupied by Elizabeth Dalloway splits in this text between the literal daughter, Woolf's biographical counterpart within the Ramsey family, and the figurative daughter, freed by her distance from both Ramsays to think back through her (surrogate) mother.” (47)
If Abel is correct, Lily’s creative process is influenced by a subconscious need to explore or resolve the mother-infant bond. Therefore, if Lily is indeed a representation of Woolf herself, Abel’s explanation guides the reader to a deeper understanding of Woolf’s narrative. Woolf’s attachment to her own mother is well-documented. Throughout various essays and diary entries, Woolf herself characterizes her preoccupation with her mother as an obsession. The parallels between Woolf’s family and the Ramsays are widely recognized and have been thoroughly discussed. Additionally, many critics suggest that Lily Briscoe is a representation of Woolf herself, a woman artist trying to be true to her art in the face of societal expectations. In her preface, Abel also notes, “Woolf’s engagement with psychoanalysis was deeply embedded in history. Increasingly through the 1920’s – the major decade of her career, and the primary focus of this study – Woolf’s narratives move backward towards a maternal point of origin that Freud, in the same decade, both acknowledged and occluded and that Klein mapped with greater complexity.” (xvi) What makes this source particularly interesting is the way Abel connects Woolf’s fascination with psychology and psychoanalysis both to the motivation for Lily’s art and creative instincts, and also to her relationship to the maternal symbol of Mrs. Ramsay. “In painting, Lily seeks a mode of representation outside the father's symbolic universe. Her use of spatial relations to articulate the earliest human relation looks forward to the development of Klein's perspective within object relations theory from the 1950's through the 1980's. By linking narrative, gender and representation, To the Lighthouse anticipates contemporary psychoanalytic controversies in the encounter it stages between Freud and Klein.” (47) Throughout the book, Lily’s attachment to Mrs. Ramsay is clear. As with Woolf and her mother, Lily is both drawn to Mrs. Ramsay and struggles to separate herself from Mrs. Ramsay’s vision of her, with respect to marrying and settling into a conventional life. As an artist, Lily is driven to create. Her feelings about Mrs. Ramsay at once generate both creative inspiration for her painting and exasperation with the spatial arrangement. Abel suggests that the completion of Lily’s painting at the end of the book also provides psychological resolution: “The painting also serves the different process of Lily’s separation from Mrs. Ramsay; the line that solves the problem of the empty space at the center of the canvas at once restores Mrs. Ramsay and asserts Lily’s autonomy.” (70)
Showing posts with label mother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mother. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The Catharsis of Artistic Vision
Rowley, Alison. “Before Her Time? Lily Briscoe and painting now”. Unframed: Practices and Politics of Women's Contemporary Painting. Ed. Rosemary Betterton. I. B. Tauris, 2004. 17-39
Alison Rowley’s assessment of Lily Briscoe touches on both the influence of Roger Fry, and the introduction of psychoanalysis in Woolf’s life. Reflecting Roger Fry’s theories on art, Lily Briscoe’s Post-Impressionistic artistic vision differs from the “pale, elegant, semi-transparent” (TtL 22) style of the currently popular Impressionists, embodied by the fictional Mr. Paunceforte. Rowley tells us that “Woolf’s abiding fear about her experiments with narrative structure in her search to write the reality of character as a succession of ‘moments of being’ was that the novels would read as ‘pale’ and ‘semi-transparent’.” (22) Furthermore, Rowley sees a connection between Lily’s feelings about Mrs. Ramsay and her struggle to find the correct compositional balance for her painting. She notes this connection in the thoughts that Lily has when she is beginning to paint, and her thoughts when she is sitting at Mrs. Ramsay’s knee. At the moment Lily first touches paint to fresh canvas, Woolf has filled Lily’s head with an image of birth: “It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child.” (TtL 22-23) When Lily is sitting at Mrs. Ramsay’s knee, she thinks that Mrs. Ramsay is “like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything.” (TtL 54) Rowley points out that both the womb and the tomb bring forth their contents only after a period or an act of upheaval occurs. The upheaval of birth is evident, and Rowley reminds us that a tomb is always sealed; in order to know the treasures contained within, a tomb must be forcibly broken open. With respect to Woolf’s mother, Rowley quotes a passage from Woolf’s essay, ‘A Sketch of the Past’: “It is perfectly true that she obsessed me, in spite of the fact that she died when I was thirteen, until I was forty-four. Then one day walking around Tavistock Square I made up, as I sometimes make up my books, To The Lighthouse; in a great, apparently involuntary, rush…Why then? I have no notion. But I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed by my mother.” (25) Rowley observes, “In general, Woolf’s narrative appears to parallel Freud’s observation that it is the absence of the maternal body that motivates the activity of symbolic substitution” (31) and she goes on to propose that the primary object of symbolic substitution is the blank canvas that so intimidates Lily when she begins to paint.
Throughout To The Lighthouse, Woolf has included clear indications of her own struggle to resolve her feelings about her mother and to apply Roger Fry’s art theory to her own writing. While other works address these topics separately, Rowley’s work weaves these elements together seamlessly. Rowley’s concept adds to the perspective gained from earlier works, providing a confirmation of sorts. Highlighting Lily’s difficulties with the spatial arrangement of the objects in her painting, Rowley notes, “This basic aesthetic operation is linked to psychic yields of unpleasure and pleasure related to experiences of the unavailability/absence of the mother.” (30) Based on the passages that Rowley includes from Woolf’s essay ‘A Sketch of The Past’, it appears that the process of writing To The Lighthouse was healing for Woolf. The creation of Lily Briscoe, a female artist who manifested challenges faced by Woolf in her own life, seems to have been cathartic for Woolf, giving her the ability to find some sort of resolution for her feelings towards her mother. At the end of the book, Lily Briscoe looks at her (almost) complete painting and is certain that the painting is destined to be hung in attics and eventually be destroyed. Undeterred, she lifts her brush and creates the famous line in the center of the canvas. With that, she is finished, and she thinks to herself, “I have had my vision.” (TtL 211) It is as if Woolf herself is defining To The Lighthouse as her seminal work; if the manuscript had lain in an attic, unseen and turning to dust, Woolf would still have attained her healing catharsis. This perspective shows us that Lily’s creative expression through paint, and by extension Woolf’s creative expression through words, exists largely for her own internal well-being, independent of the opinions of others.
Alison Rowley’s assessment of Lily Briscoe touches on both the influence of Roger Fry, and the introduction of psychoanalysis in Woolf’s life. Reflecting Roger Fry’s theories on art, Lily Briscoe’s Post-Impressionistic artistic vision differs from the “pale, elegant, semi-transparent” (TtL 22) style of the currently popular Impressionists, embodied by the fictional Mr. Paunceforte. Rowley tells us that “Woolf’s abiding fear about her experiments with narrative structure in her search to write the reality of character as a succession of ‘moments of being’ was that the novels would read as ‘pale’ and ‘semi-transparent’.” (22) Furthermore, Rowley sees a connection between Lily’s feelings about Mrs. Ramsay and her struggle to find the correct compositional balance for her painting. She notes this connection in the thoughts that Lily has when she is beginning to paint, and her thoughts when she is sitting at Mrs. Ramsay’s knee. At the moment Lily first touches paint to fresh canvas, Woolf has filled Lily’s head with an image of birth: “It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child.” (TtL 22-23) When Lily is sitting at Mrs. Ramsay’s knee, she thinks that Mrs. Ramsay is “like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything.” (TtL 54) Rowley points out that both the womb and the tomb bring forth their contents only after a period or an act of upheaval occurs. The upheaval of birth is evident, and Rowley reminds us that a tomb is always sealed; in order to know the treasures contained within, a tomb must be forcibly broken open. With respect to Woolf’s mother, Rowley quotes a passage from Woolf’s essay, ‘A Sketch of the Past’: “It is perfectly true that she obsessed me, in spite of the fact that she died when I was thirteen, until I was forty-four. Then one day walking around Tavistock Square I made up, as I sometimes make up my books, To The Lighthouse; in a great, apparently involuntary, rush…Why then? I have no notion. But I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed by my mother.” (25) Rowley observes, “In general, Woolf’s narrative appears to parallel Freud’s observation that it is the absence of the maternal body that motivates the activity of symbolic substitution” (31) and she goes on to propose that the primary object of symbolic substitution is the blank canvas that so intimidates Lily when she begins to paint.
Throughout To The Lighthouse, Woolf has included clear indications of her own struggle to resolve her feelings about her mother and to apply Roger Fry’s art theory to her own writing. While other works address these topics separately, Rowley’s work weaves these elements together seamlessly. Rowley’s concept adds to the perspective gained from earlier works, providing a confirmation of sorts. Highlighting Lily’s difficulties with the spatial arrangement of the objects in her painting, Rowley notes, “This basic aesthetic operation is linked to psychic yields of unpleasure and pleasure related to experiences of the unavailability/absence of the mother.” (30) Based on the passages that Rowley includes from Woolf’s essay ‘A Sketch of The Past’, it appears that the process of writing To The Lighthouse was healing for Woolf. The creation of Lily Briscoe, a female artist who manifested challenges faced by Woolf in her own life, seems to have been cathartic for Woolf, giving her the ability to find some sort of resolution for her feelings towards her mother. At the end of the book, Lily Briscoe looks at her (almost) complete painting and is certain that the painting is destined to be hung in attics and eventually be destroyed. Undeterred, she lifts her brush and creates the famous line in the center of the canvas. With that, she is finished, and she thinks to herself, “I have had my vision.” (TtL 211) It is as if Woolf herself is defining To The Lighthouse as her seminal work; if the manuscript had lain in an attic, unseen and turning to dust, Woolf would still have attained her healing catharsis. This perspective shows us that Lily’s creative expression through paint, and by extension Woolf’s creative expression through words, exists largely for her own internal well-being, independent of the opinions of others.
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