Clay Parrish
“...she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6
This was my first moment of “disturbia,” this line in the book kind of jumped out of the page at me, and made me smile, because I thought that it was a great description for Mrs. Ramsay. Woolf’s amazing ability to describe things is something that I have touched on in class before, because she seems to describe common things, and by being intentionally vague, every reader is left with a very good personal image to fit the description. When I read this is made me think of a mother sighing, doling out explanations all day long, spending all day cleaning and rearing children, and being so spent at the end of the day, just as she gets into bed to read a book, her baby cries. There is nothing for her to do but to sigh, lay her book down, and get back to work. Her work is never over, she must be simultaneously strict and loving, protective and prohibitive. To me, this is the perfect description, because a mother seems to soak up every emotion she can every morning, preparing to dole them out as the day goes on, squeezing every last drop out until the end of the day.
“To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other
people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so
brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without
replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of
jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There
was nothing to be said.”
Mrs. Ramsay Chapter 6
This created another moment of "disturbia” for me because it is such a foreign concept to me. While my mother always taught be to be honest and truthful, other people’s feelings have always mattered more. For Mr. Ramsay to blast through his child’s hope and his wife’s promises just because they may be false seems so foreignly cruel to me. Obviously Mrs. Ramsay agrees, so much so that this is one of the scenes in which Mrs. Ramsay’s tiredness and weakness begin to show themselves. It is as if she has been physically hit, “dazed and blinded.” Clearly she is taxed, spent, much as (relating to the first quote) a sponge losses is ability to retain water after a long time of use. I found it interesting that Woolf says dirty water, because that could be another reference to the sponge from earlier. It is like life has kept hitting her, and for a long time, she fought back, but now her will to fight is leaving her. This is what we looked at in class today, her folding in on herself, drawing away from the person that she used to be. Her husband has made her callus and unresponsive to the things that she would normally protect her children from. I can imagine that at this point, Mrs. Ramsay has a splitting headache.
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2 comments:
Whats up Clay,
I appreciate what you said about how she uses vagueness to create imagery. I personally agree with that statement however, I think that it is important to note that her word choice seems to be very calculated. By that I mean while she may not directly create an image with descriptive details, she understands how certain words will impact the reader. I don’t know how clear I’m being but essentially what I’m trying to say is that even though readers tend to make more personal connections and are therefore left with more “personal images”, as you called them, the images readers create all in the end conform with the idea Woolf was trying to convey. Some evidence of this is when we read her short stories earlier on most of the class gave the same description of the scene despite her vagueness.
Anyways, the reason this is important is I think it allows you to further dissect this one quote. If you know from the beginning she is trying to lead readers all to the same place then you know that there are some words that really wont have room for interpretation. By focusing on these specific words, it is easier to see her real message. Using the above quote as an example the words “she was nothing but” tell the reader that Mrs. Ramsey’s life is completely and solely devoted to this quality of being a sponge for emotion. While the statement I just made is a lot briefer and less poetic than your post we both ultimately said the same thing.
Just to sort of conclude this comment I want to say I think Woolf has an incredibly precise and calculated word choice. She inserts into her sentences words that are intentionally vague (like sponge) that allow the readers mind to sort of go on a tangent a create it's own images, as well as individual words (like "nothing but") which expose the point of the entire sentence.
P.S.
I doubt this is the case but in Act IV, Scene II of Hamlet the prince Calls Rosencrantz a sponge. Allusion?
Woolf uses a lot of Shakesepearen allusion. There is a line from Cymbaline, "fear no more the heat of the sun" that repeats through Mrs. Dalloway, and I think there is at least one such reference (although I forgot to which piece) in To The Lighthouse.
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