Reading Woolf: Between the Acts

Between the Acts was Woolf’s last novel, and she died before finishing editing the book. Having enjoyed so many of Woolf’s books, I’m sad to say that this was another that just didn’t gel for me. It has a lot of promise, more so than Flush, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark and I wonder if Woolf had had the time or inclination to work on it further, whether a tighter book would have resulted? It is impossible to know.

Between the Acts takes place entirely in the course of a single afternoon during which a play is performed, the summer pageant, in the gardens of Pointz Hall. The story centres around the family: Isa (Isabelle) a young, unhappy mother; Mr. Oliver, her aged father in law; Mrs Swithin, Mr. Oliver’s sister; and Giles, Isa’s husband. Through the characters of Isa and Giles we see played out passion and ennui; the characters of Mr. Oliver and his sister Mrs Swithin juxtapose faith and reason. Joining the family for lunch is Mrs. Manresa, a flirtatious and sexually appealing women and William Dodge, a homosexual and an ‘artist’ though he rejects the title.

The story opens with a lot of promise. “It was a summer’s night and they were talking, in the big room with the windows open to the garden, about the cesspool.” Isa, the main force of the story, is sitting in the room as her father in law is discussing practical village matters with a gentleman farmer, Rupert Haines, and his wife. Isa is reflecting on the emotions Rupert Haines, the man in grey, stirs within her. She suspects them to be love. In the meantime, the family is talking. Isa, in spite of her outward calm, is troubled. Her marriage, it seems, is also troubled with suggestions of infidelities on her husband’s part and her own struggling to understand how exactly she feels about her husband.

The family are preparing for the pageant, each person fitting to a familiar role. Mrs Swithin puts up the sign, she and her brother talk about the weather. Isa sits quietly, yet inside she is seething with emotion: frustration which rises from her marital situation and the endless cycle of repetition, the repeating of roles from one year to the next. “Every summer, for seven summers now, Isa had heard the same words; about the hammer and the nails; the pageant and the weather. Every year they said, it would be wet or fine; and every year it was – one or the other. The same chime followed the same chime, only this year beneath the chime she heard: ‘The girl screamed and hit him about the face with the hammer.”

Enter Mrs Manresa and her friend William Dodge. Dodge inspires different emotions in each of the characters. Underlying, yet not spoken, is his homosexuality which stirs disgust in some, sympathy in others. When Giles returns home from work he is stirred by the presence of Mrs Manresa, as is Mr. Oliver, who is seen as something of a ‘wild child’ not behaving to normal etiquette and flirting quite openly with the men. Isa is annoyed with Mrs Manresa’s affect on her husband and the suggestion of further infidelity.

The weather is fine and so follows the pageant. Penned by Miss La Trobe, the event is something about the ages of men. Or something like that. I don’t know. At this point I completely lost the plot (or the plot was lost); the entire pageant part of the book was a cacophony of words that meant absolutely nothing to me. Except this part, perhaps:

“Did the plot matter? She shifted and looked over her right shoulder. The plot was only there to beget emotion. There were only two emotions: love; and hate. There was no need to puzzle out the plot. Perhaps Miss La Trobe meant that when she cut this knot in the centre?

Don’t bother about the plot: the plot’s nothing.”

I don’t know if Woolf was hinting there or if not, but certainly I got the impression that the plot really was nothing and as a consequence I had no idea what it was about. Scenes opened, scenes closed. Lines were started, lines were lost. There was interval upon interval, many costume changes, we followed this character then that character. No one seemed to be able to finish a sentence or thought. No one seemed to know what was going on.

This pretty much bombed Between the Acts for me. The novel, from some point after the first third, was like the closing part of Orlando: fevered and stuttering; a whirling jumble of words, ideas and imagery. I couldn’t follow it. So much murmuring, so much half-finished dialogue. Too…unfinished, perhaps?  It was a bewildering read; despite its short length, it was a struggle to finish it. I still have no idea what I was reading. Can anybody help me?

Between the Acts receives a bewildered 5 out of 10 Biis. It’s early promise just didn’t flow through. 

White Hunger by Aki Ollikainen (translators: Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah)

White Hunger is the story of a famine which takes place in the winter of 1867 in Finland. Central to the story are two families: Marja, her husband Juhani and children Mataleena and Juho, a family from the farming community in the North; and Teo and his brother Lars, both from the south of the country, both holding important positions: Teo, a doctor, and Lars a member of government. The story of White Hunger centres around the impact the famine had on both families.

The situation for Marja and her family is grave. Being from a poor community, they are soon struck down by starvation. When Juhani grows sick, Marja and her children abandon him in order to seek food and shelter in the South. Specifically Marja is hoping to reach St. Petersburg, where she believes food and shelter will be available. The story of their journey is one filled with small acts of kindnesses – the generosity of those other farmers and communities who each have little to spare but are still willing to share the little they have with the mother and her two children. It is also a journey fraught with danger; the danger of the cold, the relentlessness of the snow and ice, as well as the danger from others. Marja encounters many kind people, but also many who are angry and abusive and who will take advantage of or take out their anger at their circumstances on the beggars that cross their path. Consequently Marja’s journey is one of slow, relentless loss.

Meanwhile in the South, Teo and his brother argue about the solution to the endless battle with famine and hunger. This is a battle between Finland and the outside world, which would seek to attach conditions to the supply of grain. Yet neither brother goes hungry, and the battle with hunger here is a purely ideological one. Instead a different kind of hunger consumes these people. In Teo’s case it is alcohol and sex, as another character observes: “Booze or cunt – men get the same look with both,” Leo, however, is consumed by his wife’s desire for a child, as well as the dire situation in the rest of the country.

This contrast between the fortunes of the two families is interesting. Whilst Teo and Lars play at politics or sex from the safety of their relative wealth, Marja and her family live out the realities of the desperate situation. Theirs is a torturous journey, filled with loss and desperation. The cruelty of winter, the cruelty of starvation, cold and living on the goodwill of others is seemingly endless and there’s a sense that those who are kind will find themselves not far behind Marja in throwing themselves on the kindness of others. Through Matalena we come to understand both the reality of how it feels to starve. As she describes here:

“Hunger is the kitten Willow-Lauri put in a sack, which scratches away with its small claws, causing searing pain; then more scratching, then more, until the kitten is exhausted and falls to the bottom of the sack, weighing heavily there before gathering its strength and starting a fresh struggle. You want to lift the animal out, but it scratches so hard you dare not reach inside. You have no option but to carry the bundle to the lake and throw it in a hole in the ice.”

White Hunger is an interesting read. It is relentless in its presentation of famine and its impact on the population struggling under its grip. Even so, I found this a somewhat frustrating read. In particular, the presence of women in this book was very much as object: object of hunger, object of abuse, object of sexual desire. Even though the main character in the Northern family is a women, even here she serves as an object of hunger, oppression and male desire. In contrast, the men have thoughts and desires of their own, they play with intellectualism even starting the novel on a game of chess whereas Marja is rejecting the sexual advances of her husband (for fear of pregnancy). It reminded me of that peculiar characteristic of certain Nordic crime that has to place sexual torture of women central to the story and there’s always a half-naked female body on a slab for our ‘titillation’. There’s also a sense that the endless references to sex, the use of sexual language, is there to make the story ‘edgy’, a cheap trick which the novel did not need and, somehow, did not add anything.

That quibble aside, this short story of a country’s battle against hunger makes for an interesting, quick read. There is much beauty in the language, despite the bleakness of the snowy landscape against which it is set, and whilst it is a tale of desolation and loss in the end there remains hope for a brighter future. It is not an easy read, not entertaining in the traditional sense, but if you are interested in stories of endurance this could be a good read for you. For me, I am still torn.  There is much of interest and merit in this story, but it was slightly spoiled by the lazy cliché of woman as object, and I’d have liked it if Ollikainen had given Marja more of a voice and a presence beyond the physical.

With thanks to Peirene Press for the review copy

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translator: Deborah Smith)

The Vegetarian is a novel about non-conformity in a highly conforming society. In the opening section of the book, Yeong-hye, an ‘ordinary wife’ decides to become vegetarian after experiencing a recurrent bad dream. The people around her, her husband and wider family, do not understand. Apparently it is uncommon in South Korean society for people other than Buddhist monks to become vegetarian. What follows are three connected stories, beginning with Yeong-hye then moving on to her brother-in-law and then her sister. Each is affected by Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism is slightly different way.

The story begins with Yeong-hye, as described by her husband: “Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.” Yet what follows is the story of a woman who is anything but unremarkable. Yeong-hye suffers from extremely vivid and disturbing dreams. Dreams of blood and slabs of meat, dreams of sucking down blood, blood on her skin and clothes. These dreams drive Yeong-hye to become a vegetarian; she can no longer face eating meat and can barely sleep, she is so unsettled by them. Her husband reacts without understanding, he can only see that Yeong-hye is behaving strangely and this strangeness is quite the opposite of what her husband desires. Instead he desires a plain and ordinary life. Yeong-hye’s behaviour does not fit into this.

That Yeong-hye’s husband and her family find her switch to vegetarianism disturbing becomes quite apparent very quickly. What I found disturbing as a reader was the reaction to Yeong-hye’s choice: no one attempts to understand her, they only seek to force her to comply. In the case of her husband, this means ignoring the problem and trying to ignore Yeong-hye, as he describes here:

“I sometimes told myself that, even though the woman I was living with was a little odd, nothing particularly bad would come of it. I thought I could get by perfectly well just thinking of her as a stranger, or no, as a sister, or even a maid, someone who puts food on the table and keeps the house in good order.    “

This ignorance descends into marital rape, which her husband describes in such a matter of fact way it made me feel slightly sick. In the case of Yeong-hye’s family their approach to her refusal to eat meat is an attempt at force feeding, followed by physical violence on the part of her father, which results in Yeong-hye slitting her wrist with a fruit knife. Consequently Yeong-hye is admitted to hospital and, following this, a mental institution. By this time Yeong-hye is desperately thin and emotionally distant. No one can reach her, and she clearly doesn’t want to be reached by anybody.

The story then moves to Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, an artist who becomes sexually obsessed with Yeong-hye. He confesses to have always been more attracted to Yeong-hye than his wife, and his wife’s casual mention of Yeong-hye’s ‘Mongolian Mark’ on her back send him spiraling into an obsession over which he has no control. This obsession takes the form of a particular sexual fantasy: the idea of painting Yeong-hye’s body with flowers and recording someone (himself) having sex with her. He cannot get this vision out of his mind. Against his instincts, he approaches Yeong-hye (now released from the mental institution and reintegrating into society) and asks her to model for his art. To his surprise, she agrees. Though his motives are sexual in nature, he is surprised at his own reaction to Yeong-hye once he has painted her:

“Only then did he realize what it was that had shocked him when he’d first seen her lying prone on the sheet. This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated. But this was nothing so crass as carnal desire, not for her – rather, or so it seemed, what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented.”

Eventually he follows through on his desire, finally recording himself having sex with Yeong-hye. It is at this point his activity is discovered by his wife In-hye. Both Yeong-hye and he are captured and sent to a mental institution.

Here the story turns to In-hye as she tries to come to terms with what has happened in her own life, and the slow descent into madness of her younger sister Yeong-hye. In-hye’s story is the least impassioned of the three, and perhaps the most poignant. In-hye reflects on Yeong-hye’s state as she visits the hospital on the day they attempt to insert a feeding tube into Yeong-hye’s nose. By this point Yeong-hye is convinced she has transformed from something human into a plant, that she need only plant herself by her hands into the cool soil of the forest for her transformation to be complete. We see In-hye struggling between what she is supposed to do (force feed Yeong-hye) and what Yeong-hye wants her to do (let her go). She reminisces on their childhood, the way in which Yeong-hye had been abused by their father and her cowardice in never confronting it. As though she could. This culminates in a realization that the whole of her life, she had never really lived. As she describes here:

“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure.”

These three stories, approaching the subject in very different ways, show three characters undergoing a process of self-discovery, of transformation. Each character confronts the social norm, and finds themselves set against it. In the case of Yeong-hye the process is violent, disturbing and ultimately self-defeating. Is she mad? It is a question the book neither asks nor answers. Yet Yeong-hye represents the person standing at odds with the social contract, the silent promise we each make not to rock the boat, not to be too individual, to behave in accordance with the wishes of others. In the case of her brother in law, it is his sexual desire which is at odds with the world; his desire to take part in a physical union which is extraordinary and consuming. In-hye desires only to live, but is restrained by fear from doing so. Only in the end, and through the extremity of Yeong-hye’s actions is she able to let go.

The Vegetarian is an astonishing book, powerful and magnetic and deeply disturbing. I found it inspiring and terrifying in equal parts; in particularly Yeong-hye’s story which, seeming so ordinary from a ‘western’ viewpoint, the way in which the people surrounded her reacted is perhaps a sadly familiar story. There was a disturbing lack of understanding, a lack of desire to understand which was driven solely by the need for things to go on as painlessly as possible. Yeong-hye forces those around her, reader included, to consider what it means to live, and not just to live but to live a life which has meaning and personal service, not just for the good of others. A read as extraordinary as its cover (which is stunning).  

Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy

When I was first branching out into reading more non-fiction, I thought it would be good to read some travel writing. I’d enjoyed the nature books so much, that travel seemed like a natural next step. I remember browsing the shelves at Waterstones and seeing lots of titles that looked fascinating, including those by Sibylle Bedford and Freya Stark who I suspect I will be investigating at some point in the future. In the end it was Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy that most caught my imagination, combining my dual loves of travel and bicycles (though my own bicycle is feeling a little neglected these days).

Full Tilt represents the diary that Dervla Murphy kept when she undertook a journey from Ireland to India by bicycle. Well, not exactly by bicycle; there’s a reason why this book is titled Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle as much of the time Murphy isn’t able to cycle: either due to the quality of the roads or weather conditions. At the time, Murphy was a mere 32 years old and she travelled alone. The year was 1963, and the journey was one she had envisaged since the age of ten when, as she explains, she received both a bicycle and an atlas as a birthday present. This journey was something of a lifelong dream, and it is a credit to Murphy’s self-will that it was a dream she was determined to fulfil.

This whole book is a testament to Murphy’s self-determination, her spirit and openness, her willingness to push herself to the absolute limits. By the time I was around a third of the way through the book, Murphy was my heroine. She is an amazing woman, the kind of woman whose feats should be known to all, a role model whose name should fall off the lips along with the other great explorers, distinguished by the fact that she didn’t fail. I’m gibbering, I know, but if there was ever an example of fearlessness, she is definitely it. In the course of her journey she suffers multiple vehicle accidents, is attacked by wolves as she describes with aplomb here (note: Roz is the name of her bicycle):

“It was soon after 6pm when, leaving Roz on the truck, I set off along a convenient cart-track through the trees, where the snow had been packed down by sleighs collecting fire-wood. It was some fifteen minutes later when a heavy weight hurled itself at me without warning.

I stumbled, dropping the torch that I had been carrying, then recovered my balance, and found one animal hanging by its teeth from the left shoulder of my wind-cheater, another worrying at the trousers around my right ankle, and a third standing about two yards away, looking on, only its eyes visible in the starlight.

Ironically enough, I had always thought that there was something faintly comical in the idea of being devoured by wolves. It had seemed the sort of thing that doesn’t really happen…So now, as I braced my body against the hanging weight, slipped off my glove, pulled my .25 out of my pocket, flicked up the safety catch and shot the first animal through the skull, I was possessed by the curious conviction that none of this was true, while at the same time all my actions were governed by sheer panic.”

In addition she suffers numerous rape attempts (which she dispatches with similar aplomb, if not loss of life), several broken ribs on being struck accidentally by the butt of a gun, is stung by a scorpion followed, the very next day, by hornets, near-fatal sunstroke, almost drowning and near starvation. It is astonishing that she lived to share the tale of her journey, but her strength of character and extraordinary determination carried her through. And yes, I am gibbering again.

Murphy herself is at pains to point out how ordinary she is, perhaps to stave off the kind of heroine-worship I’m falling into here. As she explains in the beginning:

“This is perhaps the moment to contradict the popular fallacy that a solitary woman who undertakes this sort of journey must be ‘very courageous’. Epictetus put it in a nutshell when he said, ‘For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.’ And because in general the possibility of physical danger does not frighten me, courage is not required; when a man tries to rob or assault me or when I find myself, as darkness is falling, utterly exhausted and waist-deep in snow half-way up a mountain pass, then I am afraid – but in such circumstances it is the instinct of self-preservation, rather than courage, that takes over.’

I think she is too modest. I think she is both a courageous and fearless woman, and we could all learn a lot from her. Perhaps Murphy, here, reflects a more altruistic society in which it was not considered ‘strange’ for women to pursue their dreams, to take risks and seek adventure. Perhaps the fact that she has to mention it is proof that we’re not there yet.

There, I’ve gibbered enough. Now to her journey. We join Murphy as she enters Europe and quickly she covers the period during which she cycles through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and into Turkey. Much of this early part of the journey is covered in quite superficial detail (wolves excepted) though the journey was doubtless eventful and more difficult than anticipated. Problems with roads and difficult weather conditions meant that much of the time she was unable to cycle, but instead travelled by bus or by truck.

The story really starts as she enters Afghanistan, a country for which she develops a real and palpable fondness. Everywhere she goes she discovers spectacular landscapes, as she describes here:

“We left Kabul at 7am in perfect cycling weather with a brilliant, warm sun, a cool breeze behind u and the air crisp and clear. Beyond a doubt today’s run up the Ghorband valley was the most wonderful cycle-ride of my life. Surely this must have been the Garden of Eden – it’s so beautiful that I was too excited to eat the lunch my hostess had packed for me and spent the day in a sort of enchanted trance. High hills look down on paddy-fields and vivid patches of young wheat and neat vineyards; on orchards of apricot, peach, almond, apple and cherry trees smothered in blossom, and on woods of willows, ash, birch and sinjit, their new leaves shivering and glistening in the wind and sun. Lean, alert youths, their clothes all rags and their bearing all pride, guard herds of cattle and nervous, handsome horses and donkeys with woolly, delicately tripping foals, and fat-tailed sheep with hundreds of bouncing lambs, and long-haired goats whose kids are among the most delightful of young animals.”

Of the people she has much to say of their kindness, of their desperate poverty, of their culture, their manners and their intelligence, not to mention their smell! It is apparent that the Afghan people won her over with their sharing and considerate nature. She discovers a similar fondness both for the land and the people of Pakistan, and a somewhat more reserved feeling about India, though the roads, apparently, were much improved.

In a time where all you hear about Afghanistan are references to the Taliban and terrorism (or drugs), and when the Muslim religion is under such intense criticism and pressure, this book is a real antidote to the constant negative press. Murphy has much to say of the joint stresses caused to Afghanistan by the presence of Western powers and Communist Russia, much positive commentary on the Muslims she encounters, their sobriety, kindness, generosity and politeness. She has much to say about the impact of the religion on the territory, as well as the status of women in that society. Some of what she says is quite surprising (even to herself) yet always considered. That she came to love both Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite the privations of her journey, is apparent in all the wonderful things she has to say about those countries. It is a fascinating insight into a land and a time when globalisation had done, perhaps, slightly less damage.

Full Tilt is a humorous, soulful and inspiring read. Murphy herself embodies a kind of openness which is rarely encountered, and a kind of determination that ensures that all her experiences, even the difficult ones, are positive. There is no mawkishness here, no self-pity. She endures, and she thrives in her endurance. I thoroughly enjoyed this travel diary, and am eager to read some more. I hear that Murphy still travels with her bicycle (a new one, I suspect) even though she is now in her seventies. What a heroine! I’m so glad she was able to undertake this journey and, more so, share it with the rest of us. A name I will be promoting with tedious regularity (and I hear she has a new book out this year. I can’t wait!). As a double-positive, it may have inspired me to get back on my bike!