Night and Day
Book Choice for April 2019, by Virginia Woolf
This book review was 8 months in the making, because that’s how long it took me to read these dense 385 pages, while putting it down for weeks at a time. By now you might assume that is my normal way of reading, but really it is related to the crammed-emotionality of this particular book. Reading cam be hard, as I will get into later in this discussion. This discussion will be told in 2 parts, with the first part written after I read the actual text and the second part after I went back and read the introduction, looking for signposts.
Before page 200, I didn’t care about any character in this book, and I mean, at all. Shortly after page 200, Mary Dachet goes home for the weekend and I started to actually give a crap. It may be that the first 200 pages very much are engaged with setting up the world, a mostly unconscious rich person’s London. About 100 pages after I started to care at all about what the characters said to each other—interestingly, in a very “realistic” way it doesn’t matter what the characters actually said to each other, because as in life, their utterances were hopelessly mundane and didn’t match up at all with the motives behind them, which the reader was privy to, for the most part.
At about page 300, I began to dimly realize that the characters actually were in love with each other, before that it was told, but I was not convinced. In a way, this book expresses very much the garbled intellectualizing the brain dies when it tries to think about its feelings, this is done very often, characters following their trains of thought…Which I think it’s very brave and high-level writing, but that doesn’t mean it is compelling. And still– you would have to be the most romantic reader enamoured of romantic fiction to care about the consequences of these people’s love for each other. It’s not that it doesn’t work—for all I know it might be the first stream of consciousness novel ever—and I do think it must have been QUITE a different novel , perhaps radical, in 1919— it’s just, hard going.
You will read 12 pages with supreme effort, and then set it down for a week or so, if you go faster you’re a better Mensch than me. The last 80 pages I managed to accomplish in about 5 days, this was mainly possible because I did not want to DNF it, I did not want to choose a new book for April, also it’s part of my “Read all of Virginia Woolf Project” which I have imposed on myself for no clear reason, other than the fact I am a woman (makes sense?) And I was somewhat motivated by this 12 books a year project overall. With this done, I can finally move forward. I started this book on a grey spring day when we lived in our old apartment. Perhaps I use books to mark time. I thought—as this book was coming to a close—maybe I really like this! Maybe I will find that this book is great—(I do think it is “great” as an accomplishment) and that I will want to read it again someday. As no one really learned anything though, that they weren’t capable of before the story started, I am not inclined to read it again, however. It will go on the shelf beside The Voyage Out, V. Woolf’s first novel, waiting until my reading of her other works makes these first two more clear…
Now I’m moving on to read the Introduction, which in my Wordsworth Copy is by “Dorinda Guest PhD.” It showed me my own predilection for non-fiction reading (which I haven’t given into at all this year—I do attempt to read hard NF everyday after all)–but there were times during this book I wished I could just read the damn introduction and figure out what I was supposed to be learning here. So now I will read what dear Dorinda says, and hope it gives me a frame, a map, a path…
It didn’t really. Apparently Wordsworth introductions are to “guide, not interpret” for the reader. There are certain things it brought out to me, such as the “self-conciousness” of Mary Dachet, who is trying to create a profession for herself, of working for increased women’s rights, when that was never a vocation before and certainly isn’t paid…I know this “self-consciousness” well myself. There is very subtle exploration in this book on what it would be to do work that represented us, that we “loved” or believed in, and especially as this is discussed for the women, Katharine and Mary, (men’s work is of course a solid, accepted thing that requires no justification), which is very interesting. The Introducton points out that Katharine’s profession was “living at home”–which of course sounds rather stupid, but which entailed a myriad of stupid activities and supporting roles and an entire way of being (that obscures most women’s personalities, if they were even allowed to have them) and was actually a full-time job.
Finally, the Introduction reminded me that the saving grace of this book is really the figure of Katharine’s mother—she was the only comedy I saw in the book (aside from the awkwardness of humans speaking to each other, or maybe the patheticness of Katharine’s suitor Rodney, though I thought he was more of a tragedy myself), and she was fantastic. Perpetually enthused about something, absolutely ludicrous in her cries after “Poetry! Poetry!” and her ridiculous quotations. It’s not often that a female character would get such a role, not having to be instructive or ideal, just a kind of exuberant person who has to be worked around—a nutty professor, but a woman. That’s very rare. Women always have to be perfect, and serve a POINT. Or they aren’t there.
All in all, Night and Day, you mystify me. I know you are getting at something, with all the energy of a placid stream rubbing a pebble smooth. It was not fiery enough for me, all the feelings were hidden under successive overcoats of Englishness—but I know you were important. But I don’t think you were romantic and most of the time I was incredibly bored.
I’ve heard various accounts of Jacob’s Room, from booktubers (although I cannot remember exactly who). Someone really enjoyed it’s artistry, and another felt she had suffered too long, for no reward. Well, that’s next year’s April to look forward too!