Modernist Arts In _To The Lighthouse_

After reading extensive amounts of writings (really, way too much) on artistic movements in modernism for my DigiPrez, trying to make sense of all the madness that was behind them (and as a result only getting more confused), I saw a huge spectrum of ideas that artists were striving portray in their work. Though trying to understand these movements often led me in circles, usually pointing to no clear answer, it was nonetheless fascinating and helped me notice a lot of similar ideas in To The Lighthouse, which got me thinking about the relationship between literature and other art forms during the modernist period.

As I quickly learned when doing my research, modernism wasn't actually a clear movement of its own, it's more of an umbrella term encompassing several movements in the arts that branched off during this time in reaction to the radical shifting in worldview that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. Because of this, you can't really directly compare modernist literature such as To the Lighthouse to modernist art because they weren't technically part of the same movement - the term "modernist" is a term we can use to describe the period now in retrospect, but at the time, visual art had a more subtle, fragmented influence on literature. So in this week's post I am going to look at the concepts behind different artistic movements in modernism and see how these concepts are present in To the Lighthouse.

Heckel, Erich. Portrait of a Man. 1919.

One of the first "modernist" movements to arise was German Expressionism, which began roughly in 1905. Expressionists sought to portray an image in the way that they perceived them emotionally - an object was portrayed beyond just what it was, it was portrayed as what it represented to the artist, which was reflected in use of color, lines, and composition. Much of the emotion that was being conveyed was a sense of alienation of the self from the outside world ("German Expressionism"). To the Lighthouse, and most of Woolf's writing, is brimming with expressionism - the smallest details, objects, encounters the characters have are described in such a way that a deep meaning is revealed behind them. Mrs. Ramsay shows this pretty clearly when she is sitting knitting and stops to look around the room: "It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one" (Woolf 97). Another particular instance in the novel which exhibits expressionism, including the idea of alienation of the viewer, is seen when Mr. Ramsay is looking at Mrs. Ramsay reading to James in the window and thinks:

"Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off,  and halts by the window and gazes at his son and wife, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of stars" (Woolf 57).

It's a very simple image, Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James, but Mr. Ramsay seeing them sees at once their beauty and his separation from them, revealing his inner turmoil about deciding between striving heroically for greatness and his desire to surrender and relish in life's beauty.

Mondrian, Piet.
Composition with White and Yellow. 1942. 

This image of Mrs. Ramsay reading to James evokes musing in several characters, one of whom is Lily Briscoe, who is painting a scene that includes the two in the window. In her painting, she has represented Mrs. Ramsay and James as "the triangular purple shape" - when Mr. Bankes asks Lily why she did this, it is explained as "in that corner, it was bright, here, in this, she felt the need of darkness" (Woolf 81). Mr. Bankes has a hard time grasping this - he is used to the subject of paintings being portrayed with "reverence" - the largest painting in his house was praised by painters and valued at high prices, but for Lily the search in her painting is not for reverence, but "how to connect this mass on the right hand with all that on the left" (Woolf 83). I saw a lot of similarities between how Lily perceived the window and the art of the De Stijl movement. De Stijl began in 1917, and was a form of Dutch abstract art, which sought to create a "universal visual language", using shapes and lines not to depict particular people or subjects, but to convey an underlying sense of harmony ("Modern Art Timeline"). As Lily says, "the picture was not of them", instead they were represented in her deeper search to create a sense of connection and balance.

Magritte, René. Time Transfixed. 1938

Through the artist Lily's eyes, one can see a lot of "modernist" ideas appear in her perspectives. Oftentimes, how Lily sees things doesn't make a lot of logical sense, it's rather strange and surreal. I think comparison can also be done between some of these perceptions and the art of the Surrealists. Surrealism originated in the 1910's, and was heavily influenced by the work of Freud, seeking to free the mind from the constraints of the conscious through exploring dreams and the private mind  - Surrealist art often featured strangely juxtaposed objects that served as symbols, a warping of reality with the workings of the imagination (Voorhies). Though dreams and the workings of the unconscious is not  explicitly evoked, this use of symbolic, oddly juxtaposed objects I think is seen pretty well in Lily's "kitchen table"stuck upside down in a pear tree- the image she sees in her mind to represent Mr. Ramsay's work: "And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity which stuck there, its four legs in the air" (Woolf 38). It's very strange that Lily should see the work of a philosopher as a scrubbed kitchen table lodged in a pear tree, but we see that she uses this image because his work doesn't make sense to her: "She asked [Andrew] what his father's books were about. 'Subject and object and the nature of reality,' Andrew had said. And
when she said Heavens, she had no notion of what that meant, 'Think of a kitchen table then,' he told her" (Woolf 38). We see that Mr. Ramsay's "reality" doesn't make sense to Lily, so she uses her imagination to make sense of it, to create a superior reality, which was precisely what Surrealists sought to do.

Picasso, Pablo.
Ambroise Vollard. 1915.

A final artistic movement that is seen throughout the novel is Cubism. Cubism was invented by 1907 by Pablo Picasso. These works were made of up small fragments of images with shifting perspectives to create an image of a whole. This idea of striving to create a whole from fragments can be seen across several art forms and movements under modernism, and appears several times throughout the novel. Again, Lily Briscoe voices this idea, when looking at Mrs. Ramsay and James in the window, and thinking, "... how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach" (Woolf 73). Mrs. Ramsay seems to be constantly undergoing fluctuations in feelings toward her husband, and in one part they converge: "Suddenly, as if the movement of his hand had released it, the load of her accumulated impressions of him tilted up, and down poured in a ponderous avalanche all she felt about him" (Woolf 39). This search for unity, for how all one's conflicting emotions and judgements and desires can be added up together is something characters in this novel grapple with frequently. You can see Lily struggling with this when she is trying to form some sort of opinion of Mr. Bankes, the Ramsay's, and love in general: "How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking what one felt, or disliking?" (Woolf 40).

While there was no one clear "modernist" movement, it makes sense that you can see similarities between so many of the movements in visual arts and literature. People had completely lost faith in traditional institutions, structures, forms, and were striving to create something new. This was obviously incredibly difficult however, and the struggle for original creation itself was very important to the time, and so it is only natural that artists fed off of each other, tried to take new ideas in their own direction, which is why I think there was such an intense relationship between the arts. Trying to read the novel with visual concepts in mind has been a little challenging but has helped give me new perspectives on the writing, so it will be interesting to see how this continues as the novel progresses.

Works Cited:
"German Expressionism". MoMA - The Collection. The Museum of Modern Art. 2013. 25 Oct 2013. <http://www.moma.org/explore/collection/ge/>.

"Modern Art Timeline"> ArtFactory. www.Artyfactory.com. 2013. 25 Oct 2013. <http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/timelines/modern_art_timeline.htm>.

Voorhies, James. "Surrealism". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2000-. 25 Oct 2013. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm>.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1955. Print.

The F-Word in _Pride and Prejudice_

So I, like several other people in our class, found myself getting oddly riled up during class lately about the (deceptively) seemingly controversy-free Pride and Prejudice. The novel has inspired more discussion in our class that I think I've seen with any other novel, and the primary center of this has been the debate over whether or not Pride and Prejudice is a feminist text. As a disclaimer before I explain my argument on the subject, I should probably say that I definitely consider myself a pretty strong feminist. Before everyone grimaces and goes to read someone else's blog post, I have a comment on feminism that will influence my argument a lot - I think feminism is greatly misunderstood. Most people hear the word feminist and instantly think of the standard bra-burning, man-hating, obnoxiously preachy idea of a feminist, but to me at least that's not actually what feminism is about. To me feminism is the empowerment of women - supporting women of any background or belief system in taking control of their own lives, whatever this may entail. It's about being strong. Through this light, Pride and Prejudice is most definitely a feminist text.

Look at all that mud!
 Kiera Knightly in Pride and Prejudice.

Elizabeth Bennett is one of literature's most famous strong heroines, which is the immediate argument to be made for feminism in this novel. Lizzy's father's estate is entailed on a male heir, she has a very low income, and not the most lucrative societal connections, and in the Victorian era this meant that a woman would either have to marry into money, or become a spinster. This was just the reality of the situation. A lot of people argued that Lizzy is not then a truly strong woman, because she chose to marry into money, that she eventually succumbed to society's ways - if she was a true feminist character, she would have married a poor man! Gone off and made money on her own! Never have needed a man anyways! But this would not have been realistic in the time, and part of what I think makes Lizzy such a good example of a strong woman is that she advocated for herself in a way that was practical, that could inspire real women confined to the same social constraints to make positive changes in their lives. This is best seen at the end of the novel with Georgiana Darcy's "education": "Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. By Elizabeth's instructions she began to comprehend that a woman may take liberties with her husband, which a brother will not always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself" (Austen 345). It is for Lizzy's wit and unwillingness to submit to social rules governing conversation that Darcy falls in love with her. Of course Lizzy kind of makes him say it: "'My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners - my behavior to you was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now be sincere, did you admire me for my impertinence?' 'For the liveliness of your mind, I did'" (Austen 338). You see right here that Lizzy knows she is less than conventional, and prides herself in it. You sometimes see a side come out in Lizzy that she kind of likes the power she has over Mr. Darcy: "He told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable" (Austen 325). Granted, it's not power that Lizzy wants in a marriage, she just wanted respect, which Mr. Bennet explains pretty well, "I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could neither be happy nor respectable unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior" (Austen 335). Lizzy wants a husband who respects her for who she is, but who she also can respect.
This idea of marrying someone for who they are as a person (though it does help some when said person is quite rich) and for the connection they have to each other is very important to this novel. It would have been very logical for Lizzy to marry Mr. Collins - he was their heir to her estate and had respectable income - refusing this alone, given her situation in life, was a pretty radical move. She also refused Mr. Darcy initially, even though he is probably the wealthiest character in the novel (besides Lady Catherine), because he went against what she valued in people - he (nearly) ruined Jane's change of happiness, ruined Wickham's life (so she thought), and for hurting, of course, her pride - she makes it pretty clear that she had no desire to marry him: "You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it" (Austen 172). Darcy had to change to become the type of person, not just the role in society, that Lizzy wanted to marry. And changed him she did -  Darcy says, "By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased" (Austen 328). Lizzy had high standards. And it may not seem that radical now (thankfully), that a woman demand that her standards be met, but two hundred years ago, especially if you had no means of supporting yourself, for a woman to even think that they might have the power to change a man so that she could love him as a person, would definitely be radical.
The conventional, expected behavior of women during this time is shown through the character of Charlotte Lucas upon becoming engaged to Mr. Collins: "Without thinking highly of either men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want" (Austen 111). While Charlotte's character and decision also serves to provide a nice contrast to Lizzy's, she is not shown in a negative light - she did what she had to do, essentially - marriage had been her goal and she achieved it. Lydia's marriage is also an interesting contrast to both Lizzy's and Charlotte's marriage - she married for passion, not for practicality or a connection of the minds, and though money trouble is foreshadowed for her, her happiness is never doubted: "If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my dear Wickham, you must be very happy" (Austen 343). All three women married to get what they wanted in life, whatever that may be, which is why Pride and Prejudice to me embodies a deeper, inclusive sort of feminism as well.
I think the categorization of this novel as "proto-feminist" is important to consider as well. The characters may not have wrestled free from constricting societal laws and smashed the patriarchy by any means, but in this novel we see something of a start. We see women taking control of their decisions to please themselves - Charlotte, Lydia, and Lizzy all married men that were objectionable to some degree by other characters, but they went ahead because they wanted to. And with Lizzy, we see someone who different, and knows it, and uses it to her advantage, and she tell's her future husband so: "You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them" (Austen 338). She is unquestionable a strong female character, who sees nothing wrong with who she is (for better or for worse), and makes sure that a man she falls in love with loves her for who she is. For women reading this at the time - and honestly, for me reading this now, this kind of mindset can be very inspiring. And I think this discussion, this comparing of past and present values, this attempt at defining happiness, that arose these past few classes from this novel is alone justification for why it is considered a masterpiece.

Work Cited:
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Letters of Love and Life in _Pride and Prejudice_

Based on discussions in class so far over Pride and Prejudice, I don't think guys really understand just how wholly marvelous Mr. Darcy is to us ladies. Tall, dark, handsome, witty, well-read, mysterious, filthy rich and a good dancer?? Really, this is perfection we are dealing with. If I had been approached by Mr. Darcy in the woods with a four-page letter detailing his private life, I definitely would have swooned, or at least had a much more positive reaction than Lizzy did. I've found myself wishing a lot reading this book that letters were still "a thing", because they were so much more personal than most communication these days, and so I was interested in class today when we were talking about epistolaries. I've read Pride and Prejudice a few times and seen the BBC adaptations an actually unreal amount of times, and I've always just taken the letters for granted, but I thought it would be interesting to look more into the technical, functional purpose of letters in the novel.

The epistolary novel is defined by a novel that is comprised of a series of documents, which includes diary entries and other formats, but usually is through letters. In epistolaries, the letters play crucial roles in turns of events in the plot, and also serve the purpose of giving a more intimate view of a character by conveying their thoughts without the interference of a third-person, narrator's point of view ("Epistolary novel"). Based on this definition, I wanted to evaluate to what extent Pride and Prejudice could be defined as an epistolary. 

There is the obvious difference - Pride and Prejudice isn't really comprised of a series of documents, it is primarily narration with letters interspersed. However, the letters function in this novel as a force heavily impacting the plot. The first time we see a letter, it serves to introduce us to the character of Mr. Collins: "The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured father, always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach" (Austen 55). The letter here acts as as a natural segue that is realistic to how such social exchanges were at the time period, but also clearly reveals Mr. Collins' motivations and general tone of communicating with others that instantly tells the reader a lot through implication of his character without extensive description. 

This latter purpose of revealing the character's ways of thinking is also seen later on in a letter to Lizzy from Jane after her negative experience with Miss Bingley in London: "But, my dear sister, though the event has proved you right, do not think me obstinate if I still assert, that, considering what her behaviour was, my confidence was as natural as your suspicion" (Austen 132). Here we clearly see Jane's ability to automatically consider everyone's perspective in a situation and justify the actions and feelings of each, which tells the reader a lot more about Jane as a person than pure description could provide. This also serves as a source for the reader to learn of plot advancements occurring in a different place than where the main character (Lizzy) is. 

Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, 1995.

But perhaps the most important letter in what we have read of the novel so far (though it is by far the most important letter in the novel), is the one Mr. Darcy hands Lizzy in the tree grove after his catastrophic attempt at a marriage proposal. In terms of influencing the plot, it does so extremely, being what ultimately influences Lizzy to start changing her opinion of Mr. Darcy, and revealing Mr. Wickham's deception:

 "But every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent, as to render Mr. Darcy's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole" (Austen 182). 

Because Lizzy's change of opinion about Mr. Darcy (along with some change on his part too) was necessary for the plot to advance toward their ultimate betrothal, her reaction to hearing his side of the story was of utmost importance, and the letter serves perfectly to reveal this. It also established the truth about Mr. Darcy from Mr. Darcy himself - so far all we really know of his character is his cryptic dialogue in conversation and the varying accounts of him from other characters. This back-and-forth banter about Mr. Darcy makes it a little difficult to always know what to believe about him, and so the letter serves a further purpose of making Mr. Darcy's actions and feelings believable because we are hearing them firsthand: "I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself, and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold to any human being" (Austen 179). This first serves to grab the reader's attention (ooo, juicy secret!) but then consequently makes the reader want to take Darcy's side, which is crucial for his development as a character.

So I guess you could classify Pride and Prejudice as a quasi-epistolary novel - though letters do not serve as the primary format of the novel, they do serve huge roles that I didn't even realize of creating shifts in the plot as well as giving an up-close view of the characters by allowing the reader to "hear" their inner thoughts. 

Works Cited:

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19898. Print.

"Epistolary novel". Wikipedia. 1 Oct 2013. 11 Oct. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel>.

Satan, A Hero??

Dore, Gustav.
Satan Talks to the Council of Hell. c. 1866.

In one of our classes when we were just starting Paradise Lost, we talked about the question of whether or not Satan could be considered the hero of the epic. I was really interested in the idea of someone (especially from the 17th century) trying to make the Antichrist into a hero or sorts, and for the first couple books it almost seemed like Satan was going to the star of Paradise Lost. As the story progressed though, attention turned to God, to Adam and Eve, and Satan became less and less, well, cool. His character became increasingly deceitful and greedy - Satan became less a champion of those in servitude and more a selfish, jealousy-driven being stuck in the past. After the epic was over, I wanted to try and look back at the plot to see if Satan's journey modeled the monomyth idea of a typical "hero's journey" (I'm weirdly into the idea of the monomyth for some reason), but when I looked into the specific plot transitions and character development during the stages of the monomyth, Satan didn't adhere to any of them, in fact he went through almost the exact opposite stages. That was I stumbled upon the idea of the "Byronic hero". Doing some research, I read that critics of Milton never sympathized with Satan until the Romantic era, and that was when the view of Satan as an archrebel fighting tyranny came to be. The poet Lord Byron came to develop a hero type in several of his works that is now called the Bryonic hero. The Byronic hero is said to possess flawed grandeur - they have grand aspirations and are in many ways morally superior, but have flaws such as pride and vengeance that eventually control them ("The Satanic and Byronic Hero: Overview").
This type  of hero seemed to match Satan incredibly well as he is portrayed in Paradise Lost. When Satan delivers his first epic speech in Book I, he is rallying the fallen angels after their fall from Heaven and is portrayed as morally superior to his defeater, God: "Here at least/We shall be free... .To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:/Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n." (Milton 1.258-63). Key characteristics of Byronic heroes are being deceitful, emotionally conflicted, seductive, and having a troubled past ("Byronic Hero"). Satan was extremely deceitful - deceit came to be one of the words associated with Satan, as he took on the shape of animals to eavesdrop on Adam and Eve in Eden, the form of a heavenly spirit to question the angels about humans, and ultimately the body of the Serpent in Eve's fateful temptation. The other three traits Satan also embodied, but sometimes in a more subtle way. You don't really see Satan's emotionally conflicted side until he is first looking on Eden in Book IV, showing regret  about rebelling against God: "He deserv'd no such return/From me, whom he created what I was/In that bright eminence, and with his good/Upbraided none; nor was his service hard./What could be less than to afford him praise" (Milton 4.42-46), and then blaming himself for his choice: "Nay curs'd be thou; since against his thy will/Chose freely what now it so justly rues" (Milton 4.72-73), and then accepting his fate of belonging to eternal Hell: "Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;/And in the lowest deep a lower deep/Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide/To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven" (Milton 4.75-78).
Satan's seductive side came out especially when he was tempting Eve - the temptation of Eve was in many ways a seduction, be it a sinister one. When Satan comes upon Eve in the form of the Serpent, her beauty and innocence overcomes him for a moment: "Her graceful innocence, her every Air/Of gesture or least action overaw'd/His malice, and with rapine sweet bereav'd/His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought" (Milton 9.459-462). The Serpent is immensely charming to Eve, winning her over by speaking to her vain side, calling her "A Goddess among Gods", "Empress of this fair world", "Sovran of creatures, universal Dame" (Milton 10). Satan seems to have figured out the key to making a girl listen to you, by making her feel empowered: "He ended, and his words replete with guile/Into her heart too easy entrance won" (Milton 9.732-34).
And, in the end, Satan ultimately accomplishes his goal of corrupting mankind, introducing Sin and Death in to Eden, effectively ruining Paradise. However, he goes back to Hell to brag about his success, expecting the fruits of victory: "Ye have th'account/Of my performance: What remains ye Gods,/But up and enter now into full bliss" (Milton 10.502-503), but then is turned into a snake along with the rest of the rebel angels. This to me represents the essential embodiment of a Byronic hero - the eventual defeat of the once-hero because of flaws - in Satan's case, vengeance and greed - that the character cannot overcome. This is also what makes it impossible for Satan to be considered a true hero of Paradise Lost, because instead of championing over others because of enlightened morals (as a true hero is supposed to), the opposite happens - Satan is defeated by forces of superior morals because of his "wrong" morals. So I guess Satan may not have been able to turned into a real hero because of his fundamentally evil nature, but he is nonetheless given a more complex hero form - a dark hero, but in many ways a hero nonetheless, and to me it was this alternate view of a hero that made Paradise Lost a surprisingly thought-provoking read.

Here's a link to a chart that shows the basic pattern of the traditional hero's journey monomyth in case anyone is interested:
http://mormonmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/monomyth.jpg

Works Cited:

"Byronic Hero". Wikipedia. 30 Sep 2013. 04 Oct 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero>.

"The Satanic and Byronic Hero". Norton Topics Online. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 04 Oct 2013. <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_5/>.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1968.