I wanted to post something on the second part of the novel, called "Time Passes" before we go into the concluding section. Certainly we can see part II as a bridge from the first to the third, but it's more than that. It advances the theme of nature's power to destoy life and life's fight to combat destruction. It presents the central conflict within the novel, nature's forces versues human's struggle to survive.
The first part ends with the household going to bed.
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So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, “This is he” or “This is she.” Sometimes a hand was raised as if to clutch something or ward off something, or somebody groaned, or somebody laughed aloud as if sharing a joke with nothingness.
Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind (the house was ramshackle after all) crept round corners and ventured indoors. Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper, asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly brushing the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the red and yellow roses on the wall-paper whether they time at their disposal) the torn letters in the wastepaper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now open to them and asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How long would they endure?
First, what beautiful writing. Second, an open rhetorical question, from who's point of view is this being told? It's sort of a combination of omniscient and limited point of view. Strikes me as original. What we do see is the power of nature slowly taking over its domain, even down to the rust which breaks down the metal. But this goes on for more than a night:
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But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a **** crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.
It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking; which, did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.
The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.
Two important points here. First the destruction alludes to, in scientific terms, entropy, the law of nature (2nd law of thermodynamics for those interested ;) I am an engineer you know) that states that nature evolves to chaos and disorder. I'm fairly confident that Woolf is specifically thinking of entropy. It was something discussed in her day and the dramatisation describes it perfectly, even the concept of rusting. From Merriam-Webster: entropy: "2 a : the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity b : a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder." Second, that middle paragraph I quoted lifts the conflict into a devine level. Entropy, the forces of destruction, is from God himself, and the human toil is Mrs. R's fight. (Remember this passage from chapter 10 of part I: "A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed (when she sat alone); there were, she remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the most part, oddly enough, she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.")
And so you can read on about the destruction of the house and the lives and the eleven years that pass. It is also interesting to see how Mrs. McNab, the housekeeper of sorts,relates to a imaginary Mrs. Ramsey during this time. But she is ultimately asked to prepare the house again, and the human effort to combat entropy, the destructive force of nature, is dramatised:
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If the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the scale downwards, the whole house would have plunged to the depths to lie upon the sands of oblivion. But there was a force working; something not highly conscious; something that leered, something that lurched; something not inspired to go about its work with dignified ritual or solemn chanting. Mrs McNab groaned; Mrs Bast creaked. They were old; they were stiff; their legs ached. They came with their brooms and pails at last; they got to work. All of a sudden, would Mrs McNab see that the house was ready, one of the young ladies wrote: would she get this done; would she get that done; all in a hurry. They might be coming for the summer; had left everything to the last; expected to find things as they had left them. Slowly and painfully, with broom and pail, mopping, scouring, Mrs McNab, Mrs Bast, stayed the corruption and the rot; rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing over them now a basin, now a cupboard; fetched up from oblivion all the Waverley novels and a tea-set one morning; in the afternoon restored to sun and air a brass fender and a set of steel fire-irons. George, Mrs Bast’s son, caught the rats, and cut the grass. They had the builders. Attended with the creaking of hinges and the screeching of bolts, the slamming and banging of damp-swollen woodwork, some rusty laborious birth seemed to be taking place, as the women, stooping, rising, groaning, singing, slapped and slammed, upstairs now, now down in the cellars. Oh, they said, the work!
Notice also follwing this how Mrs. McNab (she is a parallel figure to Mrs. Ramsey) also brings people together through tea and food and gossip, and unlike the all the other characters also has children. And so it is "finished," the human effort to combat entropy. Human effort is an organizing principle, the opposite of chaos.
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At last, after days of labour within, of cutting and digging without, dusters were flicked from the windows, the windows were shut to, keys were turned all over the house; the front door was banged; it was finished.
And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing had drowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, dissevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dorbeetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related; which the ear strains to bring together and is always on the verge of harmonising, but they are never quite heard, never fully harmonised, and at last, in the evening, one after another silence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers in the bed by the window.
The phrase "it is finished" is quite significant to the novel, but I won't get into that now; hold it for the end. What's interesting is that second paragraph where I can't help but feel that Woolf is alluding to the spirit of Mrs. Ramsey, returned. "that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, dissevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dorbeetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related" all suggests a spiritual interaction, and what spirit is around everyone but that of Mrs. Ramsey.
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Originally Posted by
plainjane
Fecundity does not equal heroic. I know you mean all of the above, but I really do not agree. If anything I see futility in her actions. Not that it is her fault, it is only human. The very things she strives for, the various matings she champions especially...are not successful.
Maybe that is what Woolf in her own depressed state of mind was saying, no matter how we plan, no matter what machinations we finagle, if we try to force issues, or people into our mold of what we think they should be or do, we fail. The falling apart of the house, the inexorable sweeping of the lighthouse....all show this.
So you think that Woolf is advocating we give up and commit suicide? You think she's advocating that no one procreate, no children be born, just go and paint our little pictures and let human life extinguish?
From M-W:
heroic
Main Entry: 1he·ro·ic
Pronunciation: hi-'rO-ik also her-'O- or hE-'rO-
Variant(s): also he·ro·ical /-i-k&l/
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, resembling, or suggesting heroes especially of antiquity
2 a : exhibiting or marked by courage and daring b : supremely noble or self-sacrificing
3 a : of impressive size, power, extent, or effect <heroic doses> <a heroic voice> b (1) : of great intensity : EXTREME, DRASTIC <heroic effort> (2) : of a kind that is likely only to be undertaken to save a life <heroic surgery>
4 : of, relating to, or constituting drama written during the Restoration in heroic couplets and concerned with a conflict between love and honor
I advocate that Mrs. Ramsey is marked by courage, supremely noble, and self-sacrificing. And yes fecundity is heroic in the battle against nature. Nature as portrayed here is the force that destroys life; fecundity is the means of creating life.
