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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Three
Spring 2004
Finding “Being” through “Non-Being" - Page 3
by
Rachelle Wander
According to Woolf’s autobiographical methods, time plays an important factor in the construction of the perceived self. Theorist Rita Felski discusses the structural forms of autobiography in her essay Autobiography and Postmodernism using time as a prime example. Felski describes two opposing writing styles: the journal method and the retrospective technique. Felski believes the latter of the approaches concentrates solely on the writers past, as autobiography remains uninterested in including the present in order to discuss the past. She explains, “the second type of confessional text employs a structure based on retrospective narration and is less obviously concerned with the inclusiveness and depiction of every detail of daily events” (Felski 46). Here, Felski declares that the retrospective form of writing suggests the present has little to inspire the past, as the autobiographer is more concerned with life altering events. However, contrary to Felski’s concept, in Woolf’s autobiography, she uses both the journal and the retrospective style in order to fully understand her identity. Woolf believes that the present (when exactly she is doing the writing) creates her past. She determines, “to make [her notes] include the present – at least enough of the present to serve as a platform to stand upon” (75), as “it would be interesting to make the two people, [her] now, [her] then come out in contrast” (75) because “this past is much affected by the present moment” (75). In other words, Woolf acknowledges that her present position (feelings, moods, age, knowledge, etc) profoundly influence her perception of the past, and it is this assessment of her past that aides Woolf in understanding her present identity. Because she repeatedly incorporates the present in diary form before she elaborates on her past, these specific present diary entries represent moments of “being,” which cause her to write about certain moments of “non-being.”
As evidence of her belief that the past influences the present, Woolf admits that while crossing the English Channel one day, she thinks of her passed half-sister, Stella. Consequently, the following month, she proceeds to write about Stella. (Woolf 98). Woolf declares by connecting the present with the past, “that it is it then that [she is] living most fully in the present” (98). That particular moment of “being” forced her to recall those of “non-being.” This gives an example of Woolf creating a pattern, an understanding of her life. Although literary critic James Gindin suggests that Woolf strives to “make the distinction between [moments of “being” and “non-being”] meaningless” (324), Woolf is actually trying to juxtapose them, and by this juxtaposition she emphasizes their opposition. Pairing past and present moments of “being” and “non-being” Woolf again contradicts Felski’s concept on the lack of mingling past and present in order to create meaning. Although Woolf clearly contradicts both Felski’s and Gindin’s claims, that is simply her method. By never mentioning those separate moments again throughout her writing allows Woolf to leave her concepts open-ended. How she handles these moments make her Virginia, but how another handles them would make that person’s identity. She concludes, “For the present when backed by the past is a thousand times deeper than the present when it presses so close that you can feel nothing else” (Woolf 98). Here is she alluding to those foundation memories, her earliest recollected memories. Woolf emphasizes her belief that the foundation of one’s present is greatly affected by the past.
As an example of how Woolf juxtaposes moments of “being” and “non-being,” she explores the origin of her personal anxieties by describing two similar traumatic experiences. In this case, she depicts the first one as a moment of “being” and the second one as a moment of “non-being.” She does this in order to show how similar traumas or experiences can have disparate effects on identity if they occur during isolated stages of life. These traumatic events were sexual assaults by her two older half-brothers, Gerald and George Duckworth. Woolf’s steady writing technique reveals little qualms in retelling and sharing her past horrific experiences, as she understands that they were simply in the past, and that theseexperiences happened to her, not because of her. (Albright 10). Woolf believes the first abuse by Gerald Duckworth to be a moment of “being” because she recounts the experience early in “A Sketch of the Past” adjacent to other primary, yet powerful moments of “being.” Woolf remembers thinking, “how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts . . . I remember resenting it, disliking it” (69). Her serious tone and morbid depiction of the event reveals the momentous impact this moment of “being” had upon her. The second abuse by her other half-brother, George Duckworth, occurs much later in her life, at a time when a girl “enters Society.” By taking on an air of dark parody, Woolf attempts to almost comically represent the abuse, which causes the moment to be a form of “cotton wool.” Gindin believes Woolf attempts to write such traumatic instances in a comical way because,
She knew well the fright and the difficulty, for her, in trying to make art out of a direct confrontation with ‘non-being,’ with the actual material of her experience, how often she had to reduce that material to something close to parody to prevent herself from being overwhelmed by it. (324)
In Woolf’s search for making moments of “non-being” into art, she must handle even the most traumatic of incidents in any way that she can best understand them. Woolf’s sarcastic tone comments upon her community’s twisted view on how caring and supportive George Duckworth was for his pitied sisters and thus shows the absurdity of the entire episode. Woolf remarks, “Yes, the old ladies of Kensington and Belgravia never knew that George Duckworth was not only father and mother, brother and sister to those poor Stephen girls; he was their lover also” (177). The comical interpretation of her abuse clearly shows how it became a moment of “non-being” because, as it seems to mirror the initial abuse, the damage had already been done to her. Gerald’s sexual abuse had already formed a moment of “being,” and therefore any such repetitious instances become moments of “non-being.” The latter abuse was merely an extension of the former. Her depiction of the second abuse by George as a “non-being” moment exemplifies her belief that “the present when backed by the past” alters the impacts of both events when examined in retrospect. The alteration occurs in her tone. There is an obvious ease in tone when Woolf explains how George abused her compared to the intensity and darkness of tone when Gerald first defiles her. Although she wrote about George abusing her first, by covering the incident with a comical spin, it demonstrates Woolf’s attempt to ease the suffocation of the event “pressing so close [to her she] can feel nothing else.” Later in her life, when recounting her abuse by Gerald, Woolf’s description of the episode shows how clearly it “shocked” her emotionally. Essentially, Woolf discovers that the first abuse diminished the intensity from and helped in her coping with the second abuse due to the fact that it was a reoccurrence.
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