InterChange Conference on Woolf's Between the Acts (7/3/00)

Karin Westman:

We spoke Friday about the degree of optimism or pessimism we hear in Woolf's last novel. To continue that conversation, consider the following question in order to initiate your discussion:

The "megaphonic, anonymous, loud-speaking" voice with which Miss LaTrobe ends her play asks her audience to "consider ourselves," revealing the audience's virtues as questionable, but ends with the suggestion that humans have some redeeming qualities individually, if not as a whole: "There is such a thing -- you can't deny it. What? You can't descry it? All you can see of yourselves is scraps, orts and fragments? Well then listen to the gramaphone affirming...." (186-8).

...and what exactly is the gramaphone "affirming"? Are we to agree with Mr. Streatfield's reading of the gramaphone and the play, for instance? Or, are we to take the gramaphone's claims of affirmation as ironic, impossible?

Elizabeth Andrews:

I think that the gramaphone is affirming the uniting of the "fragments" of humanity. It seems to be the force which brings together all of the individuals in the audience to collectively account for their redeeming qualities.

Elizabeth Davis:

the gramaphone afirms the connections between people

Jennifer Boyd Cook:

I didn't take that so much as that there are exceptional human qualities which stand out. I thought the "orts and fragments" comment which kept recurring was a more a comment on time and how we exist as bits and pieces of ourselves as exemplified through the play's final act when the actors move around with mirrors reflecting only fragments of the audience. I think the gramaphone idea is prob. ironic because as Fitzgerald notes, the author behind the bushes is a social outcast, thus undermining the unity she creates at the end of the play.

Karin Westman:

Do you think its the music alone that pulls them together then, and not some "human" quality?

Elizabeth Andrews:

I think that the music is familiar and common to them all, so in essence it represents their common human qualities which bring them together.

Karin Westman:

Jennifer, for teh "human" quality, I was thinking of the passage in the middle of p.188: "there's someting to be said for:..."

Elizabeth Davis:

the music is a substitute for human qualities and that brings them together

Karin Westman:

So perhaps the music allows the audience to recognize their similarities, not otherwise noticeable.

Will the "unity" cease, then, once the gramaphone music ends?

Amy Ketner:

Most all charactors have redeeming qualities, yet they do not always use them to turn around a bad situation. I agree with Mr. Streatfield's reading of the play. Every charactor sholud look at themselves in the mirror and reflect on who they are individually, yet this does not happen. The meaning of the play is optimistic, yet when we hear the gramaphones last words, "Dispersed we are" the irony becomes evident. Although the play was an attempt to reach out to the goodness that exists within the crowd and bring aobut some sort of change, it is a failure. The crowd goes on with normal life and the play fades into the past.

Elizabeth Andrews:

Unfortunately, yes. Woolf doesn't seem to leave much room for hope of improvement. It is the little things like Miss Latrobe being an eccentric and outcast member of society, Isa's compulsive poetry, and Gile's violent outbursts that make this the case. Alone (without the aid of the gramaphone) they feel isolated and stop seeking unity. Maybe that is Woolf's depression talking...

Jennifer Boyd Cook:

The unity does cease in away. There are a couple of pages worth, if I remember correctly, which account for the crowd dispersing. Dispersing is a word which is heavily stressed in the song playing as they leave the play.

Karin Westman:

Does awareness count for anything? That is, since we do get several pages of reflection from the dispersing audience, does their conversation and discussion, however fragmented, seem optimistic?

Elizabeth Davis:

when the music is over it will be quiet again. the ties of music will sever the unity and they will be free to move, or disperse.

Jennifer Boyd Cook:

Are we suppose to take Woolf's ending as optimistic, with Giles and Isa beginning to talk under a curtain just rising? There seems to be a unity Woolf wants to provide us with on the last page, but I'm not sure if it settles right with me. Did anyone else have the same confusion?

Elizabeth Andrews:

The dispersing audience does -talk- but they do not -act-. It is action that Woolf stresses brings about change. That is why the play doesn't "take." It made a good case and explained why people should be drawn together, but it didn't explain how, or convince them to take action to figure out how.

Amy Ketner:

Where there is awareness, there is always possiblity for change. These charactors, however aware they may be, do not have much hope for change.

Elizabeth Andrews:

Maybe Woolf offered a guise of a "happy ending" (the potential development between Giles and Isa) in an effort to over compensate for her depressed state of mind. THat is a leap, I know, and we can't know the answer, but it seems possible that the end doesn't fit the pattern of the whole and maybe it would have been edited differently had she had the opportunity.

Jennifer Boyd Cook:

I'm not sure what to think of the audience's conversation leaving, especially the words of the main characters like Oliver and Lucy. Oliver's gripiness over Lucy's religous fervor seems more vocal and cutting. Lucy also realizes how much the opinions of her brother come to dominate her own thoughts. I don't really know whether to view the play's aftermath as optimisitc or not. I'm not sure if everyone went away with what they were suppose to.

Karin Westman:

Jennifer's raised a good question about the end in her last message: Any thoughts? Have we received a "formal" artistic unity, if not an "actual" one? Can the actual come from the formal artistic one?

Karin Westman:

(in my last post, re: "formal" unity: I was thinking of the symmetry of the final image, the way the scene would look on the stage, or in a painting...)

Doug Grant:

The question about artistic unity is the only one I could probably answer, cause it seems to me that this is the primary reason Woolf includes the play . The way it brings the characters together, even if in confrontation, shows the reader just how characteristic this is of artistic unity.

Amy Ketner:

I think the ending goes along perfectly with the rest of the play. Throughout the play there are patterns of divisions between every charactor. Divisions so deep that these charactors feel that they are simply actors themselves putting on a play, yet this play is their real lives. I feel that this is sad, and not the way a normal, fulfilling life should be. The last words of the book, "The curtain rose. They spoke" shows that no reality exists in this world. When the charactors arent "acting" their parts, they really dont know who they are or what to do. When they are forced to reflect, like when the mirrors were brought in front of them, they are uncomfortable.

Jennifer Boyd Cook:

I think what bothers me about the ending is that, reading along you accept and are often very touched by the way Woolf conceives of time, our place in the world, as well as her depiction of very realistic characters and her abilty to isolate their thoughts. At the ending, though, I felt the unity was too forced. I feel that the actual unity should have been left with the crowd in the final moments of the play. Isa and Giles togther at the end clash too much with the separation I felt was being highlighted between Oliver and Lucy. Artistically, the image seems to be the inspiriation or a refl;ection of the two figures Mrs. La Trobe sees, but I don't know if this brief union can carry the weight of the universal union which the book seems to push.

Elizabeth Andrews:

Maybe the novel is constructed with formal unity because it starts in desperation and ends in hopelessness. But seriously, why would anyone want to read that? I think that the point Woolf is making is that BTA is the way things ARE but it is not the way things HAVE TO BE. So the irony is translated on the readers' (not the audience of the play's) level to spur us into action.

Doug Grant:

The only thing that bothers me about the way the novel ends is that somwhow, even though many things are concluded, the story seems to be lacking closure. Woolf is usually very carefull about stuff like this, so I wonder if I'm just wrong.

Karin Westman:

*****If you'd like to change conferences, you can. Just use the InterChange menu and join the other conference, and wait for the messages to load...

Karin Westman:

The final image does seem to bear a lot of interpretive weight -- linked as it is to Miss LaTrobe's vision of her next play. What would have beent he effect if Woolf had chosen, as Jennifer wondered, to end with the audience dispersing?

Jennifer Boyd Cook:

Perhaps this has nothing to do with the current topic at hand, but whne Lucy was at the lillie pond tpwards the end, I thought for sure Woolf was going to try and put something in about the ghost, pretend ghost, the servants had created. I kept waiting for her to mention it for some reason because it seemed appropriate. Oh, well. :) Do you think her state of mind had anything to do with the ending that she chose?

Karin Westman:

If there were ghosts, how wouldf their inclusion affect our understanding of time and the past in the novel? I feel as thought the tenor of it would shift, suggesting some kind of spiritual life after death the rest of the novel denies.

Banks Yatsula:

To have ended it with a dispersion would have ,to me, been even more depressing. I seem to feel that "dispersed are we" to go out and start the process of change. That is somewhat optimistic though, and I do realize that making changes is the most difficult thing that one must do in life. Because people can get sooooo caught up in what other people think we have to go into ourselves , or into our "Ivory Tower" to reflect and absorb and process before we can actually do any changing.

Karin Westman:

***TO wrap up our discussion here, please offer the following: 1) Do you think that Woolf's novel is optimistic, pessimistic, or ambivalent about the future, and 2) two reasons why.

Karin Westman:

(You can interprete the "future" in terms of the characters or the readers)

Elizabeth Davis:

BTA is pessimistic because the characters are actors and therefore are not real. Woolf seemed to have a problem with what was real or fictitious. her husband said this was the longest suicide note ever, inclines me to agree. the curtain rises on another play, an act, that Virginia didn't want to be a part of.

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