who's afraid of virginia woolf? not i, but i was confused by her. it's hard to be scared when you have no idea what is going. i am starting to realize i can not pay attention to modernist writers. as i read, i constantly lost track of who or what woolf was writing about because of her overuse of pronouns and endless addition of clauses to sentences. also there were so many commas, it reminded me of gertrude stein. without periods, my mind wonders and can not focus, so i spent most of my reading, re-reading. in fact, i started it and after being 80 pages in, started it all over again because i felt like i hadn't grasped anything. thankfully, on the second reading i felt like i was actually reading.
i started off with this virginia woolf novel because flavorpill had listed it as one of the 30 novels to read before 30. i was enticed by their description of it being a "gorgeous read" and "an artful and introspective study of time and family". however, i did not find it very profound. yes, woolf had a beautiful way of describing life and love but i couldn't find any true character in any of her characters. i found lily briscoe whiny and her obsession with mrs. ramsay was creepy. in my opinion, lily was too scared to live life and mrs. ramsay was her scapegoat for why she was unhappy in life. mr. ramsay was pompous and self-righteous. i would have joined cam and james in their silent war against his tyranny. mrs. ramsey had interesting viewpoints on life but the way she tried to orchestra the lives of others made her overbearing. (okay i get it lily, but at anytime you could have been your own person). i did have a soft spot for the atheist because his life was quite trying which resulted in him being rough around the edges. but all in all, no one gave me any deep insight for when i embark on my thirties.
as for the family aspect, yes, we all secretly want to kill our parents. i understood james frustration. however, as a late twentysomething, this frustration comes not from a parent being too blunt and inconsiderate of my feelings, but from the fact that at times i feel that i am just as smart or smarter than my parent. this makes life a challenge when a) our parents give advice and b) we want to give our parents advice.
though i will say, cam and james' secret alliance against their father is a true testament of having a sibling. when siblings aren't fighting with each other there is some unsaid bond that comes into effect when one sibling is being treated unjustly by an adult. i always say my sister and i can fight like cats and dogs but when push comes to shove we are always there for each other.
the best section was time passes, which was also very sad. it is difficult to think that the things that mean so much to me today will, as time passes, grow moldy, grow old, deteriorate or eventually die. the people that mean so much to me today may not be in my life in the future (i'm sadly already starting to experience this). and the love that i have for people and things will one day only be a memory instead of a real-life feeling. however, all of this type of talk seems so depressing for someone my age. yes, 30 is a big transition year, but i am just settling into my life versus being in its final stages. i think this type of deep revelation would be more appropriate at my end of thirties versus the beginning of them. so i should put it on my list of 40 to read before 40.
quotations (see, her writing is beautiful):
"Nature has but little clay like that which she moulded you."
"They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love."
". . . how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became cured and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."
"love that never attempted to clutch it's object, but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain."
"A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on the other, and she always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her . . ."
"Love had a thousand shapes."
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