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literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

Amy Foster

January 14, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Amy Foster (1901) first appeared in the London Illustrated News and was published with Joseph Conrad’s other tales of endurance and extreme conditions, Falk, and The Secret Sharer, to form the collection Typhoon and Other Tales in 1903. What looks at first as if it is going to be a tale of positive redemption turns out to be a grim parable of a tragic or even pessimistic view of the world.

Joseph Conrad

Amy Foster – critical commentary

The immigrant experience

Yanko’s anguished journey across northern Europe is a deeply felt account of emigration and social isolation – one which reflects the experience of the many thousands of souls who uprooted themselves in their search for a better life in the West. Yanko is culturally and linguistically cut off from everything he experiences in transit.

Conrad’s great artistic achievement in this story is in these passages is to show the world through the emigrant’s naive and unsophisticated point of view. Yanko doesn’t understand where he is or what is going on around him. But we know he is on the railroad, passing through Berlin, or embarking on the ship that is to take him to America – or Amerika, for this was the route to be taken by Kafka’s Karl Rossman only a decade and a half later.

The passages dealing with the shipwreck and its awful aftermath are ones which Conrad imagined many times in his reflections on tragedies and accidents at sea, from Lord Jim and Typhoon to The Shadow-Line.

When Yanko touches dry land the story takes on distinctly Dickensian tones of the inhospitable marshes, and Amy Foster’s gesture of bringing bread to succour a ragged and desperate fugitive in precisely the same location as Pip’s generosity to Magwitch is a pure echo of Great Expectations.

Yanko’s positive determination to survive is a contrast to the xenophobic reaction of the locals, who with the exception of Swaffer and Dr Kennedy treat him abominably. Yanko survives and even prospers, with the ‘immigrant mentality’ of sceptical but stoic endurance. He seems to eventually integrate successfully, and yet ultimately he is betrayed by his own rescuer. Amy denies him in his most extreme moment of need.

Conrad was not a religious man, but there is everything in the story to suggest a Christian reading of the tale. Yanko suffers exile, shipwreck, humiliation, whiplashes, stoning, scorn, and rejection – yet he endures and forgives those who torment him. And he is ‘rescued’ by a simple girl who takes pity on him.

Since Yanko comes from eastern Europe it is common for critics to read the story biographically. Conrad’s family suffered exile at the hands of the Russians, and Conrad himself was technically an outsider in English society – even though he became a naturalized British subject in 1886 as soon as he had completed his examinations for the merchant service.

A great deal is made in the story of Yanko’s inability to express himself – though Conrad had been tri-lingual (Polish, English, French) since his childhood.

The narrative

In common with many of Conrad’s other tales and novels, the narrative is noticeably indirect. An un-named outer narrator introduces the story, but its main events are relayed to us by Dr Kennedy, one of the few local characters who is sympathetic to Yanko and his plight.

Amy Foster – study resources

Amy Foster – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Amy Foster – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Amy Foster – Kindle eBook (includes screenplay)

Amy Foster – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

Amy Foster – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

Amy Foster – plot summary

Yanko Goorall is a poor emigrant from ‘the eastern range of the Carpathians’. His family have made sacrifices and raised the money to send him in search of a new life in America, via an unscrupulous organisation. He travels across Europe in very difficult conditions, and is then a sole survivor of a shipwreck off the coast of Kent.

He has lost everything, is hungry, wretched, and knows no English. For days he staggers around the coastal marshlands. When he comes into contact with local inhabitants, they regard him as a madman, shun him, and throw stones at him. Finally, a young woman Amy Foster takes pity on him and gives him something to eat.

A neighbour provides him with some rudimentary shelter, and he gradually starts working and making himself useful. Amy is attracted to his foreign appearance, and falls in love with him. Against opposition from neighbours and relatives, she marries Yanko and they have a son. He is even given a house in return for saving a child’s life.

Some time later Yanko falls ill and rapidly descends into a delirious fever in which he reverts to his native Polish. Amy takes fright and deserts him in his most urgent moment of need, when he is crying out to her for water. Next day he is dead.

Film adaptation

Director Beeban Kidron (1997)

“Amy Foster”, renamed “Swept from the Sea”
starring Rachel Weiz and Vincent Perez

Principal characters

I	the unnamed outer narrator
Dr Kennedy	a retired naval surgeon, and the principal inner-narrator
Isaac Foster	a farmer
Amy Foster	his daughter
Mr Smith	the tenant at New Barns Farm
Swaffer	Smith’s neighbour
Yanko Goorall	an east European emigrant
Johnny Goorall	Yanko and Amy’s son

Biography

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other works by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
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Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
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&copy Roy Johnson 2012

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

An Anarchist

October 1, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

An Anarchist was written late in 1905. It was first serialized in Harper’s Magazine, 1906, then later collected in A Set of Six, 1908 (UK), 1915 (US). The other stories in this collection are Gaspar Ruiz, The Informer, The Brute, The Duel, and Il Conde.

An Anarchist – critical commentary

Conrad is amazingly frank in his 1908 take-it-or-leave-it introductory notes to A Set of Six, the collection which includes The Anarchist.

Of The Informer and An Anarchist I will say next to nothing. The pedigree of these tales is hopelessly complicated and not worth disentangling at this distance of time. I found them and here they are. The discriminating reader will guess that I have found them within my mind; but how they or their elements came in there I have forgotten for the most part; and for the rest I really don’t see why I should give myself away more than I have done already.

Conrad obviously had an interest in anarchists and the radical political movements of the late nineteenth century (see The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes) but in the case of The Anarchist he depicts someone who is perceived to be an anarchist by someone else (the ranch manager) – but who is simply a victim of fate.

Paul is an ordinary young working man who is criminalized merely because he resists arrest when drunk. When released from jail he is unable to find work, and falls in with a group of anarchists – without ever sharing their political ideology. And when on the penitentiary island he is not particularly active in the revolt against the State (the prison guards).

However, political theory aside, it could be argued that Paul behaves in a manner which many people would consider anarchic. He has some humanitarian scruples in not joining the prisoner revolt in the penitentiary and its aftermath, yet once in the escape boat, he has no scruples about shooting his two fellow escapees and ditching the evidence. He escapes intact, but then refuses the offer to rejoin European society. He is not so much an anarchist as an ‘outsider’.

An Anarchist – study resources

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon UK

A Set of Six – CreateSpace editions – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

A Set of Six – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

An Anarchist – plot summary

An un-named narrator is on a cattle-ranching island in South America. The manager of the company relates how he saved a runaway convict and, convincing himself he was an anarchist from Barcelona, gave him a job as an engineer on the company’s steam boat.

Paul (the convict) then relates his life history to the narrator. Whilst celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday with friends in Paris, he gets drunk, fights with police, and goes to jail. On release he cannot get work. He falls in with a group of anarchists who support themselves by stealing from the rich. When they attempt to rob a bank the plot is foiled and he is deported to a penitentiary island in Cayenne (French Guiana).

The convicts there organise a mutiny and the prison warders are overthrown. Paul does not participate in the uprising for humanitarian reasons. Whilst hiding in some bushes he watches soldiers pursuing convicts, then on finding a revolver he escapes in a boat. Two other convicts seize control of the boat and they all row off to sea to escape.

Paul produces the revolver and takes charge, forcing the other two to do the rowing. When they spot a passenger schooner, the two men suddenly become very friendly towards Paul, but he shoots them both and pushes the bodies overboard, then throws away the gun.

The schooner picks him up and drops him off at the island where the story began. The narrator invites him to leave the island and return to Europe – but he chooses to remain, having become slightly deranged.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

Principal characters

I	an un-named European narrator
Harry Gee	the manager of the cattle station
Paul	‘Anarchista de Barcelona’ – actually from Paris

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

An Imaginative Woman

May 1, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

An Imaginative Woman was first published as a serial in Pall Mall Magazine in 1894. It was originally part of Wessex Tales (1896) but Hardy moved it into his collection Life’s Little Ironies (1912) for reasons that he explains rather cryptically in his preface, but which throw some light on how he meant it to be understood:

turning as it does upon a trick of Nature … a physical possibility that may attach to a wife of vivid imaginings, as is well known to medical practitioners and other observers of such manifestations.

There isn’t actually any ‘medical’ issue involved in the denouement of the story, so Hardy seems to be indulging in a little teasing provocation in this explanatory note. But it does hint at the crucial dramatic irony on which the story hinges that is discussed in the critical commentary below. It’s one of a number of stories Hardy wrote on the theme of injudicious or unsatisfactory marriages – For Conscience’ Sake and To Please His Wife are other typical examples. And of course Hardy had his own experience as first hand evidence of early-life romances which can lead into middle-aged misery.

Thomas Hardy

An Imaginative Woman – critical commentary

Irony – I

Contemporary readers can be forgiven if they do not spot the very delicate but crucial irony that Hardy inserts into the pivotal scene in the story when Ella undresses herself for a quasi-erotic solitary contemplation of Trewe’s photograph. Her rapture is interrupted when her husband Marchmill returns unexpectedly, and after refusing her hint that he sleep in another room (a passage from the original manuscript omitted from The Pall Mall Magazine publication) he kisses her and says “I wanted to be with you tonight.”

The very understated implication is that they have sex together that particular night. It was impossible to be explicit about such matters, writing at this time. So Marchmill’s final suspicion at the end of the story that his wife has been unfaithful to him during their holiday is doubly ironic. It was something she was trying desperately to achieve – but failing to do so. But the major point is that the child is certainly Marchmill’s, even though he rejects it.

The reader knows that Ella never gets to see or meet Trewe, even though she puts on his clothes, worships his photograph, and sleeps in his bed. Marchmill on the other hand is oblivious to his wife’s feelings and aspirations throughout the story, yet when he finally does come to feel a form of retrospective jealousy his suspicions lead him to a conclusion which is understandable but false.

This might seem to be playing fast and loose with the reader, but Hardy was writing under the very severe restrictions exercised by publishers at the time. It should be remembered that he stopped writing novels because of the outrage generated by Jude the Obscure. He turned his attention to poetry instead, and is now regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the period.

Irony – II

A second example of irony is that Trewe’s last poems were entitled Lyrics to a Woman Unknown, and he leaves a letter addressed to a friend in which he explains his yearning for a woman he has not actually met:

I have long dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know; and she, this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume: the imaginary woman alone

So, at the same time that Ella has been pining after a Trewe she had never met, he has been searching for a female soul mate. They never actually meet; neither of them get what they want; and they both end up dead. You can see why Hardy is renowned for his tragic pessimism.

A curious feature

Robert Trewe commits suicide in the story by shooting himself in the head with a revolver – and yet he is buried in a cemetery. In the nineteenth century the stigma against suicide meant that the church would not normally allow someone who had taken their own life to be buried in consecrated ground. Hardy was well aware of these social prohibitions, as he had already demonstrated in Far from the Madding Crowd when Fanny is forced to bury her illegitimate dead child outside the graveyard. So it is slightly puzzling that he include such a scene in this story – unless he was merely reflecting the loosening of a formerly rigid social convention.

An Imaginative Woman – study resources

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Life’s Little Ironies – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Life’s Little Ironies – audiobook version at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

An Imaginative Woman – plot summary

Ella Marchmill is a romantic young woman with an artistic temperament and an unfulfilled personal life. She is bored with her marriage, and has written and published poetry under the pseudonym John Ivy. On holiday with her husband and three children in Solentsea (Southsea) they find lodgings normally occupied by a young poet Robert Trewe, who moves out to accommodate them.

Ella finds scraps of poetry written on the walls of Trewe’s room, reads the books he has left there, and becomes caught up in a romantic dream of their being soul mates, even though she has never met him or even seen him.

Various arrangements are made whereby he might call at the lodgings, giving her the chance to meet him, but they all come to nothing. Then she writes to him under her pseudonym and sends him some of her poems.

The Marchmills return home, and a family friend who is on holiday with Trewe is invited to stay en route back home. The friend arrives, but Trewe does not, apologising that he is in a depressed state of mind.

Shortly afterwards, Trewe commits suicide. Ella travels secretly to the burial, and is followed there by her husband, who is tolerant of her behaviour,

Ella subsequently has a fourth child, and dies as a result. Her husband finds that she has kept a photograph of Trewe and a lock of his hair as a romantic memento. He compares the hair with that of his new young son and falsely concludes that there has been a liaison between his wife and the poet whilst they were on holiday. He rejects the child.

Principal characters

William Marchmill	a gunsmith from the English midlands
Ella Marchmill	his wife, a romantic and unfulfilled woman (30)
Mrs Hooper	a widowed boarding house landlady
Robert Trewe	a romantic poet (30)

Hardy’s WESSEX

Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
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The Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
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Wessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.
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Thomas Hardy – web links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

More on Thomas Hardy
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

An International Episode

January 6, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

An International Episode was first published in The Cornhill Magazine for December 1878—January 1879. It later appeared in book form later the same year published by Harper in New York.

An International Episode – critical commentary

This is one of many tales exploring the ‘international theme’ made famous by Henry James. As an American who had lived in Europe (and in England in particular) for many years, he very frequently put European characters in an American setting, and vice versa – exploring the manners, morals, and behaviour of one group on another.

And with feet in both camps (as it were) he was able to create satirical sketches which offered accounts of each group showing their characteristics as seen by the other. In An International Episode for instance it is obvious that he contrasts the voluble, good-natured hospitality of the Americans with the cold and unfriendly way in which the Americans are treated by the English upper class on their stay in London.

However, it has to be said that overall, this tale is marked by a sense of uncertainty in both its characterisation and construction – as if James was not quite sure how to handle the international theme at this relatively early stage. For instance, Mrs Westgate is introduced as a lightweight chatterbox, full of contradictory and repetitive soliloquies on the differences between American and European society.

Yet when she visits London only a few months later she is a different character altogether, guarded and scheming in her ambition to outdo the English aristocrats. As she declares to her younger sister: ‘The policy I mean to follow is very deep’. And indeed, during the confrontation with the Duchess of Bayswater and her daughter Lady Pimlico, who arrive at their hotel determined to humiliate the two Yankees, she beats Lambeth’s mother into submission over the invitation to Branches castle.

The constructional uncertainties are epitomised by the inclusion of characters such as Mr Westgate, Willy Woodley, and even Captain Littledale, who are introduced into the narrative as significant players – only to disappear, having made very little contribution to the story. They are cyphers whose only function is to move the story from one point to the next. As a result, the story lacks the structural cohesion and sense of thematic density which characterises his tales at their best.

The new American woman

The strongest feature of the tale is the development of what was to become an original character type – the ‘new American woman’ – similar to Daisy Miller and Isabel Archer. Bessie Alden is a well read intellectual young woman from Boston (a renowned centre of culture and learning). She has absorbed her impressions of England almost entirely from novels, and at first her naive enthusiasm to learn more is a vehicle for some mild satire.

But as soon as she travels to England and begins to question Lord Lambert about the country’s history and its institutions, his complete lack of learning, culture, or historical consciousness reveals him to be an aristocratic blockhead. Moreover, she does not let him off the hook when he tries to counter her probes with flattery. She quizzes him about his role as a ‘hereditary legislator’, and he is forced to admit that he does not speak in the House of Lords because he has ‘nothing to say’.

Even that point is driven further home when she exposes the iniquity of the hierarchical and snobbish English class system, and she disapproves profoundly with the English system of precedence. The same spirit of democratic egalitarianism is expressed by her sister Kitty when she tells Percy Beaumont:

I must say that I don’t like to be patronised. I may be very eccentric and undisciplined and unreasonable; but I confess I never was fond of patronage. I like to associate with people on the same terms as I do in my own country; that’s a particular taste that I have. But here people seem to expect something else.

Finally, she asserts her Yankee independence and free spirit by rejecting the invitation to share a weekend with his uber-snobbish mother the Duchess of Bayswater at his country seat at Branches castle. Marriage to an English aristocrat is sacrificed to her sense of intellectual curiosity and democratic self-respect. Kitty Westgate is worried that people might think they have been scared off by the Duchess, but Bessie ‘seemed to regret nothing’.

An International Episode – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

Tales of Henry James – Norton Critical Editions

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

An International Episode – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

An International Episode – story synopsis

Part I Percy Beaumont and his cousin Lord Lambeth arrive in New York on business in the middle of summer. The city is very hot and they feel overwhelmed. When they present a letter of introduction to a lawyer Mr Westgate, he invites them to stay at his house in Newport where it will be cooler.

Part II The two men sail overnight to Newport where they have breakfast in their hotel. They then visit Mrs Westgate who receives them very hospitably but subjects them to a barrage of contradictory over-generalisations about the differences between European and American society.

Part III An excursion to the seaside is organised, during which Bessie Alden, Mrs Westgate’s sister, makes a considerable impression on Lord Lambert. She is a Bostonian, is well read on English culture, and wishes to know a lot more. The two men move in to stay at the Westgate house, and Miss Alden makes further enquiries regarding Lord Lambert’s social position, family, and expectations. She is super-enthusiastic about his position as an aristocrat, whereas he is comically self-deprecating. Percy Beaumont meanwhile warns him against Miss Alden’s campaign to ensnare him, and even sends Lambert’s mother a letter of warning. As a result, Lady Lambeth (the Duchess of Bayswater) writes a letter recalling her son on the pretext that his father is ill.

Part IV The following year Mrs Westgate and Bessie are visiting London on their trip to Europe. They are joined by Willy Woodley, a young American acquaintance doing the same thing. Bessie wants to contact their two English friends, but Mrs Westgate warns her against expecting reciprocated hospitality, and she doesn’t want it thought that Bessie has followed Lambert across the Atlantic in pursuit of a rich husband. The two sisters venture with chaperone Willy Woodley into Hyde Park, where they meet Lord Lambeth again, who invites them to his country estate at Branches castle.

Part V Social contact is re-established, in which there is a lot of sparring and banter regarding the differences between English and American values. The two Englishmen are snobbish and protective of their class, whereas the two American women are proud of their democratic traditions. Mrs Westgate plans to shock the English aristocrats. When they go on excursions to historical locations such as the Tower of London and Hampton Court, Lord Lambeth is completely ignorant of his own country’s history, which invokes criticism from Bessie. However, he continues his attentions towards her, and she begins to fall in love with him. Nevertheless, she challenges the snobbish and aristocratic traditions which he embodies.

Part VI Meanwhile Percy Beaumont warns Lambeth that his mother disapproves of the American fortune hunter (as Bessie is seen) and that he should desist with the relationship. Lambert fixes a date for the visit to Branches castle to meet his family. This precipitates a visit from his mother, the Duchess of Bayswater. She arrives at Bessie and Kitty’s hotel with the intention of intimidating them into staying away, and there is a frosty standoff in their exchanges. However, Bessie and her sister stand their ground, and it seems that the weekend party will go ahead. However, shortly afterwards it is implied that Bessie rejects the invitation, and by implication an offer of marriage from Lambeth, so the visit is called off. The two sisters move on to Paris instead.

An International Episode – characters

I	the occasional outer narrator
Percy Beaumont	an English barrister
Lord Lambert	his rich young cousin
Mr Westgate	a busy American lawyer
Mrs Kitty Westgate	his pretty wife (30)
Captain Littledale	his friend, an English diplomat
Miss Bessie Alden	Mrs Westgate’s young sister from Boston (20)
Willy Woodley	a young American
Duchess of Bayswater	Lord Lambeth’s mother
Lady Pimlico	Lord Lambeth’s sister

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

An Outcast of the Islands

August 19, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

An Outcast of the Islands (1896) is Joseph Conrad’s second novel, following closely on his first, Almayer’s Folly which was published the previous year. In fact An Outcast has a close relationship to Almayer, because it deals with some of the same characters and events.

Joseph Conrad

In fact it is part of what might be called a ‘trilogy in reverse’. An Outcast deals with events that take place in 1872, whereas Almayer’s Folly is set about 1887. An Outcast provides what might in modern media terms be called a ‘back story’ to the first novel. There is also a third volume in the series called The Rescue that deals with events set even earlier in the 1850s – but this was not published until 1920.

Conrad first conceived An Outcast as a short story called Two Vagabonds, but like many of his planned fictions it expanded as soon as he started writing it.

An Outcast of the Islands – plot summary

Peter Willems is a conceited bully who works as a ‘confidential’ clerk for Hudig & Co in Macassar in Malaysia. He has secured the job through the kindness of Tom Lingard, a sea captain who has rescued him as a youth. As the story opens, Willems is embezelling money of Hudig’s to finance a deal he hopes will make him a partner in the company.

But Willems’ illegal doings are revealed, and he is expelled by Hudig, who has only tolerated Willems because he was prepared to marry his daughter. Willems is on the point of complete despair when Lingard sails into port, bails him out financially, and recruits him to work in a commercial outpost at Sambir where he has commercial dominance. However, Willems does not get on with Almayer, the chief at the outpost. He is also unaware of a plot to cause trouble being hatched by Babalatchi, a louche character at the outpost. Willems is sinking back towards despair when he meets a young woman Aissa and is completely overwhelmed by her beauty. He leaves the outpost and goes to live with her and her blind father, Omar.

Five weeks later he returns to Almayer with the warning that plots are being hatched against the trading outpost. He asks Almayer for a loan to set up as an independent trader – a request that Almayer scornfully refuses, correctly surmising that Willems has been expelled from Hudig & Co for embezellement.

Meanwhile Babalatchi conspires with Omar against Willems, plotting to bring in outside help from rich trader Abdulla, who wishes to displace Lingard in the area. Abdulla visits Sambir, and is negatively briefed by Babalatchi Abdulla negotiates with Omar and with Willems (who he knows from Hudig & Co) and leaves with plans to return two days later.

Willems feels trapped and humiliated by his overwhelming desire for Aissa and despairs because he realises they are from completely different cultures. Aissa wish to know what has passed between Willems and Abdulla. She is conscious of her power over him but resents the trouble he brings as an outsider.

Willems has the sole objective of running away with Aissa but she refuses. Whilst they are consoling each other Omar attempts to kill Willems and it seems to Willems as if the daughter might even be helping him.

Almayer gives Captain Lingard a lengthy and somewhat confused account of Abdulla’s attack on the trading post. There is a conflict caused by both Dutch and British flags being raised over the outpost. All Almayer’s gunpowder is thrown into the river and Willems has Almayer sewn into his own hammock, before making off.

Captain Lingard has lost his ship Flash and proposes a new scheme for prospecting upriver for alluvial gold. He has brough Willems’ wife and child to Sambir, still feeling he has a responsibility for them.

Lingard is smarting from the unusually bad state of his affairs (lost ship, lost supremacy on the river). He receives notes of invitation from both Willems and Abdulla. Almayer urges him to act against their rivals.

Lingard arrives in Sambir apparently with the intention of killing Willems. He is met by Babalatchi, who urges him against Willems. Then he is intercepted by Aissa, who is distraught because Willems has become distant from her.

When Lingard confronts Willems, he punches him severely, but thinks he is not worth shooting. Willems wants Lingard to ‘rescue’ him from his plight. But Lingard does the opposite – and condemns him to remain in permanent exile with Aissa. He regards Willems as his ‘mistake’, and his ‘shame’.

Almayer feels a rancorous anxiety at what he sees as Lingard’s tolerant attitude to Willems, and he is apprehensive about his own position. He thinks of killing Willems, but then persuades Mrs Willems to ‘rescue’ her husband. He then sets off with a group of men in a boat, which through his ineptness runs aground.

Willems feels an existential dread at having been abandoned by Lingard. He thinks of himself as deracinated, cut off from all civilized help, and without any human resources to survive the ordeal – even though he has Aissa with him and Lingard is supplying him with food. Eventually his wife Joanna arrives with their son. Willems feels doubly oppressed and thinks of killing both women – but Aissa gets to the gun first and shoots him.

Study resources

An Outcast of the Islands – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

An Outcast of the Islands – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

An Outcast of the Islands – Kindle eBook

An Outcast of the Islands – DVD film adaptation at Amazon UK

An Outcast of the Islands – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

An Outcast of the Islands – DVD film adaptation at MovieMail

An Outcast of the Islands – film details at IMD

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Principal characters

Peter Willems	a Dutch confidential clerk at Hudig & Co
Joanna da Souza	his wife – a half-caste
Louis Willems	his pasty son
Leonard da Souza	his brother-in-law
Mr Vinck	cashier at Hudig & Co
Tom Lingard	an experienced sea captain with a monopolistic knowledge of river navigation
Kaspar Almayer	Lingard’s Dutch business partner, married to his adopted daughter
Babalatchi	a one-eyed vagabond
Lakamba	trader-cultivator and war-lord
Patalolo	local leader in Sambir
Omar el Badavi	blind Arab chief
Aissa	his beautiful daughter
Sambir	trading post town in Borneo
Syed Abdulla bin Selim	prosperous Muslim trader and distant relative of Omar
Nina	Almayer’s child
Ali	Almayer’s Malaysian assistant

Biography

Setting

The first part of the novel is set in Macassar, a provincial capital in southern Indonesia. The remainder and majority of the events take place in the fictional town of Sambir, which is losely based on Berau in north-east Borneo (today called Kalimantan) very close to the equator.

The river Pantai on which it is based plays an important part in the story. Captain Lingard has established his prosperous trading business based on his monopoly of navigational skills on the river which is the source of much annoyance to his business rivals.

first edition – New York, D. Appleton, 1896

Other works by Joseph Conrad

Under Western Eyes (1911) is the story of Razumov, a reluctant ‘revolutionary’. He is in fact a coward who is mistaken for a radical hero and cannot escape from the existential trap into which this puts him. This is Conrad’s searing critique of Russian ‘revolutionaries’ who put his own Polish family into exile and jeopardy. The ‘Western Eyes’ are those of an Englishman who reads and comments on Razumov’s journal – thereby creating another chance for Conrad to recount the events from a very complex perspective. Razumov achieves partial redemption as a result of his relationship with a good woman, but the ending, with faint echoes of Dostoyevski, is tragic for all concerned.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
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Chance is the first of Conrad’s novels to achieve a wide commercial success, and one of the few to have a happy ending. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, the abandoned daughter of a bankrupt tycoon, and her long struggle to find happiness and dignity. He takes his techniques of weaving complex narratives to a challenging level here. His narrator Marlow is piecing together the story from a mixture of personal experience and conversations with other characters in the novel. At times it is difficult to remember who is saying what to whom. This is a work for advanced Conrad fans only. Make sure you have read some of the earlier works first, before tackling this one.
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Victory (1915) is set in the legendary port of Surabaya and in an outpost of the Malayan archipelago. It is the story of Swedish recluse Axel Heyst, who rescues Lena, a young woman from a touring orchestra and runs off to live in remote seclusion, influenced by the pessimistic philosophy of his father. But he is pursued by two lying and scheming English gamblers, who believe he is concealing ill-gotten wealth. They corner him in his retreat, and despite the efforts of Lena to shield Heyst from their plans, there is a tragic confrontation which brings destruction into their island paradise.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales

An Outpost of Progress

October 16, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, synopsis, commentary, and study resources

An Outpost of Progress was written in July 1897 and first appeared in the magazine Cosmopolitan in 1897. Quite amazingly, given the subject of the story, this was a magazine which began as a ‘family magazine’ and eventually became a magazine for women. In the late nineteenth century however, it was a leading outlet for literary fiction, publishing stories by Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and other leading contemporary writers. The first appearance of An Outpost of Progress in book form was as part of the collection Tales of Unrest published in 1898. The other pieces in this collection were Karain: A Memory. The Idiots. The Return. and The Lagoon.

Cosmopolital Magazine – October 1897

An Outpost of Progress – story synopsis

Part I. An unsuccessful painter has been established as chief of a trading outpost somewhere in Africa. When he dies of a fever his replacement is Kayerts, with Carlier as assistant. However, the business is actually run by Makola, who is from Sierra Leone. The director of the trading company thinks the two men he has been sent are quite useless. They themselves feel vulnerable, being cut off from civilization, and each hopes the other will not die, because they would not like to be left alone.

Kayerts is there to earn a dowry for his daughter: Carlier has been sent there by his family because he has no money and is completely idle. They make a perfunctory attempt to improve their sparse quarters, then give up, taking no interest at all in the life that surrounds them. Makola conducts all trade with the local population, swapping ivory for cheap rubbishy European goods.

The two men get caught up childishly in their reading of novels by Dumas, Fennimore Cooper, and Balzac that the director has left behind. They are supported by (and dependent upon) produce donated by Gobila, the chief of a nearby village.

One day they are visited by a menacing group of strangers carrying weapons. The two men do not know what to do – so Makola deals with them but does not report the results. That night there is a lot of drumming and gunshots are heard.

Part II. The station has a staff of native workers who come from a distant tribe. Makola reports that the armed traders (who are from Luanda) wish to sell some ivory. The next night the workers are given palm wine and Makola trades them as slaves for the ivory. One of Gobila’s men is shot in the process. Kayerts and Carlier protest their outrage, but do nothing. Gobila and his villagers cut off relations (and supplies) with the station.

Since the two men are incapable of finding their own provisions, they begin to deteriorate physically. They are hoping for a visit from the company steamship for supplies, but it does not appear. Then they have a dispute over a trivial issue regarding some remaining lumps of sugar. They chase each other around the outside of the house, but Kayerts has a revolver, and ends up shooting Carlier by accident. Makola has witnessed the scene: they agree to report that Carlier died of a fever and he will be buried next day.

Next morning the station is engulfed in mist. Kayerts awakes to find Carlier’s body next to him, and he panics with fright. At the same moment the company steamer arrives on the river, and Kayerts fears that civilization is coming to judge and condemn him. He commits suicide by hanging himself on the cross marking his predecessor’s grave.

An Outpost of Progress – study resources

An Outpost of Progress – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

An Outpost of Progress – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad – Kindle eBook

An Outpost of Progress – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

An Outpost of Progress – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

An Outpost of Progress – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

An Outpost of Progress – principal characters

Kayerts	the new chief of the trading station – fat, small
Carlier	his assistant – tall with thin legs
Makola (Henry Price)	native clerk, from Sierra Leone
Mrs Price	his wife, from Loanda
Gobila	neighbouring village chief

An Outpost of Progress – commentary

These are the opening lines of the story. The notes which follow offer a detailed interpretation or close reading.

There were two white men in charge of the trading station. Kayerts the chief, was short and fat. Carlier, the assistant, was tall, with a large head and a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs.The third man on the staff was a Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained that his name was Henry Price. However, for some reason or other, the natives down the river had given him the name Makola, and it stuck with him through all his wanderings about the country. He spoke English and French with a warbling accent, wrote a beautiful hand, understood book-keeping, and cherished in his innermost heart the worship of evil spirits. His wife was a negress from Loanda, very large and very noisy. Three children rolled about in sunshine before the door of his low shed-like dwelling. Makola, taciturn and impenetrable, despised the two white men. He had charge of a small clay storehouse with a dried grass roof, and pretended to keep a correct account of beads, cotton cloth, red kerchiefs, brass wire, and other trade goods it contained. Besides the storehouse and Makola’s hut, there was only one large building in the cleared ground of the station. It was built neatly of reeds, with a verandah on all the four sides. There were three rooms in it. The one in the middle was the living-room, and had two rough tables and a few stools in it. The other two were the bedrooms for the white men, Each had a bedstead and a mosquito net for all furniture. The plank floor was littered with the belongings of the white men: open half-empty boxes, torn wearing apparel, old boots; all the things dirty, and all the things broken, that accumulate mysteriously around untidy men. There was also another dwelling-place some distance away from the buildings.

A close reading

1. ‘There were two white men in charge of the trading station.’
This is very typical of Conrad’s use of dramatic irony – because we rapidly learn that the two men are only nominally in charge. It is their assistant Makola who really does all the work and determines what goes on, whilst they are hopelessly incompetent. The term ‘white men’ is significant because the story is set against the political background of the exploitation of black Africa by white Europeans.

2. The two names Kayerts and Carlier suggest that the story is set in the Belgian Congo. Kayerts is a Flemish name, and Carlier is French, these being the two linguistic groups which comprise Belgium. The physical description of the two men emphasises their difference in the manner of comic music-hall double acts (of the Laurel and Hardy, Little and Large variety). And the term perched in ‘a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs’ is belittling and quasi-comic.

3. ‘Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained his name was Henry Price’
The use of the term ‘maintained’ suggests just the opposite – that Makola has given himself the name Henry Price because he wants to identify his interests with those of his employers. Conrad’s use of the term ‘nigger’ would not be remarkable in 1897 when the story was written.

4. The natives call him ‘Makola’ – and so does Conrad, which reinforces the reading of the previous sentence. His ‘wanderings’ suggest that he is confident and experienced.

5. Makola speaks two European languages in addition to his own African language and his wife’s (which is very likely to be different). He is also a skilled clerk. Thus he has absorbed European culture, in contrast to the two Europeans who are completely incapable of absorbing his. Yet he still worships evil spirits. In other words, he has a foot in both cultures.

6. His wife is from Loanda, which is on the coast of Angola, close to what was once called the ‘Slave Coast’. This is why she understands what the slave traders are saying later in the story.

7. ‘Rolled about’ suggests that the children are at ease in their natural environment. ‘Shed-like’ tells us the poor state of their accommodation.

8. ‘Impenetrable’ is a typical Conradian term – abstract and quasi-philosophical. It tells us that Makola keeps his feelings and his motivation well hidden. It is a similar type of term to those Conrad uses later to describe the topographical setting of the story – ‘hopeless’, ‘irresistible’, and ‘incomprehensible’. Such details contribute to the reason why Africa in a moral sense defeats the two Europeans in the story. The term ‘despised’ however is a key insight into Makola’s judgement and feelings: this points to the element of racial conflict in the story.

9. The ‘trade goods’ in which the station deals are in fact cheap rubbish, and they are being exchanged for ivory, a highly valued item in Europe. The exchange is therefore unfair, and the Africans are being cheated. But the term ‘pretended’ suggests that Makola might be engaged in a little cooking-of-the-books on his own account.

10. The ‘one large building’ reveals just how undeveloped this trading station is, at the same time as emphasising its isolation. The ‘verandah’ which goes round all four sides will be an important feature in the later part of the story when Kayerts is chasing Carlier round the house.

11. The mosquito nets would be important, because the two men are close to the equator, and therefore a long way away from their European homeland. Moreover, the previous chief of the trading post has died of fever.

12. The two men do not know how to look after themselves. The floor of the building is ‘littered’ with their ‘broken’ and ‘dirty’ goods. We also learn that they have come equipped with ‘town wearing apparel’ which is completely inappropriate for living in the tropics.

13. The other ‘dwelling place’ nearby is another example of Conrad’s scathing irony. For this place is the grave of the first station chief. Africa has already killed off one representative of Europe when the story opens – and it will claim two more before it ends.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

Conrad’s literary style

In his introductory notes to the collection Tales of Unrest in which An Outpost of Progress appeared, Conrad gives a clear indication that he was aware of breaking new ground in his writing:

almost without noticing it, I stepped into the very different atmosphere of An Outpost of Progress. I found there a different moral attitude. I seemed able to capture new reactions, new suggestions, and even new rhythms for my paragraphs.

It is certainly true that from the late years of the nineteenth century onwards, Conrad developed his very idiosyncratic prose style – one which many people find difficult to follow. His sentences become longer and longer; he uses a rich and sometimes abstract vocabulary; he is much given to quasi-philosophic intrusions into his own narrative; and in some of his novels he uses multiple narrators and a radically fractured chronology of events.

What follow are a series of notes on his style, based on a further passage from An Outpost of Progress.

The two men watched the steamer round the bend, then, ascending arm in arm the slope of the bank, returned to the station. They had been in this vast and dark country only a very short time, and as yet always in the midst of other white men, under the eye and guidance of their superiors. And now, dull as they were to the subtle influences of surroundings, they felt themselves very much alone, when suddenly left unassisted to face the wilderness; a wilderness rendered more strange, more incomprehensible by the mysterious glimpses of the vigorous life it contained. They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organisation of civilised crowds. Few men realise that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble to the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one’s kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thoughts, of one’s sensations — to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilised nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.

Sentence length

Some of the sentences here (particularly the last) are quite long. This is because he is expressing complex ideas or generating a charged atmosphere. These are what some people find difficult to follow. But they are not all long: the first, for instance, dealing with a simple action by characters, is much shorter.

Paragraph length

Conrad’s paragraphs in general are quite long – which was common in the literature of the late nineteenth century. The first part of this paragraph describes what the two characters are doing and what they are feeling; but from the sentence beginning ‘They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals’ the paragraph content switches to quasi-philosophic reflections and generalisations about human behaviour.

Narrative mode

This story is written in what’s called the ‘third person omniscient narrative mode’. That is, Conrad tells us what his characters do, what they think, and how they feel. He is in charge of the entire story, and he also provides an account of the inner lives of his characters.

But from the sentence beginning ‘Few men realise …’ the narrative mode changes. The statements which follow – right up to the end of the paragraph – are generalised observations about life and human behaviour. These opinions are not attributed to the characters (who are fairly stupid people anyway) but are offered as if they were universal truths to which any sane person would agree.

Conrad here is slipping into an unacknowledged or disguised form of first person narrative. The opinions about how human beings react to ‘primitive nature and primitive man’ are Conrad’s own opinions – but he offers them in such a subtle and powerful manner that only a careful and alert reader will notice.

Conrad here is being what is called an ‘intrusive narrator’ – weaving his own philosophy of life into the narrative. And because he is the author, in complete charge of the text, he can make his evidence in the events of the story fit the assertions he is offering. Such is the magic of imaginative literature.

But it is worth noting these shifts in narrative mode – particularly in the case of Conrad, because in many of his longer stories and his novels he manipulates the delivery of narratives in an even more complex fashion – and sometimes gets himself into trouble: (see Freya of the Seven Isles, Nostromo, and Chance for instance).

Language

You will probably have noticed that Conrad uses a number of very charged terms in his evocation of milieu in which his two characters find themselves – terms such as ‘irresistible force’, ‘unmitigated savagery’, and ‘negation of the habitual’. What makes these difficult to grasp at first is that he is switching from the very specific and concrete description of the two men and the trading station to an abstract and very general consideration of their condition. This is almost the language of philosophy – and it is certainly a change of register.

The terms ‘force’, ‘savagery’, ‘habitual’, and ‘intrusion’ are all abstract nouns which draw readers’ attention away from the overt ‘story’ and force them to consider rather large scale social reflections on life.

In fact the combination of a rather unusual and powerful adjective qualifying an abstract noun — ‘unmitigated savagery’ and ‘profound trouble’ — is a sort of trade mark of Conrad’s literary style. You will see many other examples in this story and throughout his work in general.

Prose rhythm

In prose fiction rhythm is easier to feel than to define, but it should be fairly clear that Conrad puts a lot of rhythmic emphasis into his writing by his use of alliteration, repetition, and what are called balanced phrases and parallel constructions.

For instance ‘The courage, the composure, the confidence’ is a fairly obvious use of alliteration, with an insistent stress falling on the initial letter c in each of these words (which are all abstract nouns).

He uses both repetition and parallel construction in ‘To the sentiment of being … to the clear perception … to the negation of the habitual …’ – which helps the reader through a very long sentence.

Syntax

The term ‘syntax’ is used to describe the order of words in a sentence and the logic of their connection. These are normally determined by the long traditions and the historical development of the language itself. But Conrad is often given to unusual constructions — such as ‘The director was a man ruthless and efficient’.

This isn’t wrong or grammatically incorrect, but in conventional English adjectives are usually placed before the nouns that they qualify — as in ‘The director was a ruthless and efficient man’.

But English was Conrad’s third language after Polish and French, and he often uses constructions which are influenced by or echoes of his first and second languages.

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

An Unwritten Novel

April 5, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

An Unwritten Novel was mentioned in Virginia Woolf’s diary entry for 26 January 1920. It was first published in the London Mercury in July 1920 and reprinted in Monday or Tuesday (1921). It was also later collected in A Haunted House (1944).

Virginia Woolf

An Unwritten Novel – critical commentary

This is a short modernist fiction that celebrates the life of the imagination, and points to its shortcomings. As a narrator, Woolf was in the habit of thinking aloud and talking to herself, as well as to her imaginary readers. Here she takes the process one stage further by ‘talking’ to her own fictional creations.

She also shows the process of the artistic imagination at work, raising doubts about its own creations, asking questions, and posing alternative interpretations. She even develops lines of narrative then backtracks on them as improbable or cancels them as invalid, mistaken interpretation, or rejects them as inadequate.

In other words, the very erratic process of ratiocination – all the uncertainties, mistakes, hesitations – are reproduced as part of her narrative. She even addresses her own subject, silently, from within the fictional frame, and reflects on fictional creations which ‘die’ because they are rejected as unacceptable:

Let’s dodge to the Moggridge household, set that in motion. Well, the family boots are mended on Sundays by James himself. He reads Truth. But his passion? Roses — and his wife a retired hospital nurse — interesting — for God’s sake let me have one woman with a name I like! But no; she’s of the unborn children of the mind, illicit, none the less loved … How many die in every novel that’s written — the best, the dearest, while Moggridge lives.

This is also another of her early experimental stories in which it is virtually impossible not to conceptualise the narrator as someone like Woolf herself, travelling between her two homes in central London and Lewes (which is mentioned in the story). In one sense it is Woolf allowing readers a glimpse into the mind of the novelist, shaping fictions out of everyday observations.

And even if the imagined character, in this case, turns out to be (within its own fictional construction) not a true interpretation of the events ‘behind’ the overt narrative – then no matter. Minnie Marsh’s is no less convincing as an imaginary construct of the narrator’s imagination, even if (beyond the frame of the story) she goes off to have a completely happy and fulfilling engagement with her son.

An Unwritten Novel – study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

Monday or Tuesday and Other Stories – Gutenberg.org

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon UK

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon US

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

An Unwritten Novel – an alternative reading

An Unwritten Novel – story synopsis

An un-named first-person narrator is travelling on a commuter train between London and the south coast. Whilst reading the Times, the narrator notices a woman opposite with an unhappy expression, and thinks that her character can be interpreted, especially from the expression in her eyes. The woman becomes agitated, and the narrator begins to echo her gestures.

The narrator begins to imagine that this woman (who is given the name Minnie Marsh) is paying a visit to her sister-in-law (Hilda). The family group are imagined at the dinner table, at which the narrator pushes her imagination forward, to avoid the inessential details. Minnie goes upstairs to unpack her meagre belongings, and stares out in a despairing state across the rooftops of an Eastbourne suburb on December afternoon, and thinks of God.

The narrator finds difficulty in fully imagining God, but comes up with the idea that Minnie has committed some sort of crime. The question is, what sort of crime would a woman such as Minnie commit? The narrator settles on a scene where Minnie lingers in a Croydon draper’s shop and arrives home late to discover that her baby brother has died from scalding.

The narrator then checks her construction with the figure in the railway carriage, who is pretending to be asleep. The scene returns to Eastbourne, where the petty constraint of her sister-in-law’s house drive Minnie outdoors.

The narrator wonders if she is capturing the essence of the woman, and likens the effort to that of a hawk flying over the Sussex Downs. The story then loops back to pick up where it left off. Minnie takes a boiled egg and starts eating it in her lap.

The narrator loses grasp of the story and realises that something must be done to maintain its interest. Rhododendrons and commercial travellers are considered, then she invents a salesman James Moggeridge who takes his meals with the Marshes on a particular day when he is in Eastbourne. Moggeridge’s home life is predicated, then rejected as being unsuitable.

The narrator thinks of Minnie looking back over the events of the imaginary scene, then darning a hole in her glove. Imagining that Minnie would be disappointed not to be met at the station, the narrator offers to help her with her luggage.

But it transpires that the woman is being met by her son, and the narrator realises that the invented biography was quite inaccurate. Nevertheless, the narrator goes on observing people and ends on a note of celebration for the life of the imagination.

Monday or Tuesday – first edition

Cover design by Vanessa Bell

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a tryptich of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
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Orlando (1928) is one of her lesser-known novels, although it’s critical reputation has risen in recent years. It’s a delightful fantasy which features a character who changes sex part-way through the book – and lives from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Using this device (which turns out to be strangely credible) Woolf explores issues of gender and identity as her hero-heroine moves through a variety of lives and personal adventures. Orlando starts out as an emissary to the Court of St James, lives through friendships with Swift and Alexander Pope, and ends up motoring through the west end of London on a shopping expedition in the 1920s. The character is loosely based on Vita Sackville-West, who at one time was Woolf’s lover. The novel itself was described by Nigel Nicolson (Sackville-West’s son) as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’.
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Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of her novels and stories in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive
The text and film script, production notes, casting, locations, set designs, publicity photos, video clips, costume designs, and interviews.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – short stories
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
Virginia Woolf – life and works

Analysing fiction – a glossary

November 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a checklist of literary terms

Analysing fiction requires that you are able to name and describe the features of a story or a novel that you find interesting. This means having a clear understanding of language and grammar, plus the basic elements of narrative prose. The definitions below are just the beginning. This is where the complex process of analysing fiction starts.

Vocabulary
The author’s choice of individual words – which may be drawn from various registers such as colloquial, literary, technical, slang, journalism, and may vary from simple and direct to complex and sophisticated.

Grammar
The relationships of the words in sentences, which might include such items as the use of adjectives for description, of verbs to denote action, switching between tenses to move between present and past, or any use of unusual combinations of words or phrases to create special effects.

Syntax
The arrangement and logical coherence of words in a sentence. The possibilities for re-arrangement are often used for emphasis or dramatic effect.

Figures of speech
The rhetorical devices often used to give decorative and imaginative expression to literature. For example – simile, metaphor, puns, irony.

Literary devices
The devices commonly used in literature to give added depth to a work. For example, imagery, point of view, symbolism, allusions.

Tone
The author’s attitude to the subject as revealed in the style and the manner of the writing. This might be for instance serious, comic, or ironic.

Narrator
The person telling the story. This may be the author, assuming a full knowledge of characters and their feelings: this is an omniscient narrator. It might alternatively be a fictional character invented by the author. There may also be multiple narrators. You should always be prepared to make a clear distinction between Author, Narrator, and Character – even though in some texts these may be (or appear to be) the same.

Chris Baldick’s Dictionary of Literary Terms has entries which range from definitions of ‘the absurd’ to ‘zeugma’. It’s also a guide to grammatical terms, traditional drama, literary history, and textual criticism. It contains over 1000 of the most troublesome literary terms you are likely to encounter. Some of the longer entries and explanations become like short essays on their subject.

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Narrative mode
This is usually either the first person singular (‘I am going to tell you a story about…’) or the third person singular (‘The duchess felt alarmed…’).

Narrative
The story which is being told: that is, the history of the events, characters, or whatever matters the narrator wishes to relate to the reader.

Characterisation
The means by which characters are depicted or created – commonly by accounts of their physical appearance, psychological characteristics, direct speech, and the opinions of the narrator or other characters about them.

Point of view
The literary strategy by which an author presents the events of a narrative from the perspective of a particular person – which may be the narrator or may be a fictional character. The point of view may be consistent, or it may switch between narrator and character(s). It should not be confused with the mere opinion of a character or the narrator.

Structure
The planned underlying framework or shape of a piece of work. The relationship between its parts in terms of arrangement or construction.

Theme
The underlying topic or issue, often of a general or abstract nature, as distinct from the overt subject with which the work deals. It should be possible to express theme in a single word or short phrase – such as ‘death’, ‘education’, or ‘coming of age’.

Genre
The literary category or type (for instance, short story, novella, or novel) to which the work belongs and with whose conventions it might be compared. We become aware of genre through cultural experience and know for instance that in detective stories murder mysteries are solved; in fairy stories beautiful girls marry the prince; and in some modern short stories not much happens.

Cultural context
The historical and cultural context and the circumstances in which the work was produced, which might have some bearing on its possible meanings. A text produced under conditions of strict censorship might conceal its meanings beneath symbolism or allegory.

More on language
More on literary studies
More on writing skills
More on creative writing
More on grammar

Ancestors

September 28, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, synopsis, commentary, and study resources

Ancestors was probably written in 1923 – between the composition of Jacob’s Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway (1925). It was first published in the magazine The Criterion in April 1923 – edited by fellow Bloomsburyite T.S. Eliot. It is one of a number of short stories Virginia Woolf wrote which feature guests at a party given by Clarissa Dalloway at her home in Westminster.

Virginia Woolf

Ancestors – critical commentary

Biography

This is another of Woolf’s stories in which there is more or less a complete absence of authorial comment to guide the reader’s interpretation. However, it is quite clear that Mrs Valliance is romanticising her ‘ancestors’ and that we are being invited to see her disdain for younger contemporaries in a critical light.

But it is also possible that Virginia Woolf is celebrating the rich cultural life she inherited from her own parents. After all, her mother was a society beauty and model for some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and her father was a celebrated Victorian intellectual, with colleagues ranging from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Henry James and Thomas Hardy. We note that Mrs Vallance’s father is some sort of public figure who she expects Jack Renshaw to know, and his friends are Sir Duncan Clement and a Greek scholar – just the sort of people with whom Leslie Stephen surrounded himself.

Mrs Vallance also seems to be an even more precocious version of Virginia Woolf herself: ‘She had read all Shelly between the ages of twelve and fifteen’. The connection is once more the biographical link between Woolf and her father, who gave her free access to his library as a child. It might also be borne in mind that Virginia Woolf never went to school in the sense we think of that term today. She was ‘home educated’

We know that Woolf regarded over-attention to dress as rather frivolous, and she was often criticised for her own choice of clothes. But on the other hand, she did write for Vogue, and when young she did play cricket. However, it would seem to be wrong to draw the parallels between Mrs Vallance and Virginia Woolf too closely, for Mrs Vallance at one point thinks ‘She could not bear to walk in London and see the children playing in the streets’ and it is difficult to think of anyone who has celebrated walking in the streets of London more memorably that Virginia Woolf, particularly in the case of her celebrated character, Clarissa Dalloway.

Geography

Mrs Vallance’s memories of her idyllic family life are located in Scotland according to the text- and yet the story creates no sense of such a location. It is not evoked or represented in any way. This is rather like To the Lighthouse which is supposed to be set in the Hebrides, when it is quite clear from what we know of Virginia Woolf’s life and the places she lived that the setting is based on St Ives and the nearby Godrevy lighthouse.

This is odd – because Woolf marvelously evoked the places in which she lived and worked – central London, the Sussex countryside, even the ‘suburbs’ of Richmond. She was also quite well-travelled considering the difficulties of inter-nation travel at the time she lived. But these fictional excursions into locations she didn’t actually know do not work at all.

Ancestors – study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

Monday or Tuesday and Other Stories – Gutenberg.org

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Ancestors – the text

Mrs Vallance, as Jack Renshaw made that silly, rather conceited remark of his about not liking to watch cricket matches, felt that she must draw his attention somehow, must make him understand, yes, and all the other young people whom she saw, what her father would have said; how different her father and mother, yes and she too were from all this; and how compared to really dignified simple men and women like her father, like her dear mother, all this seemed to her so trivial.

‘Here we all are,’ she said suddenly, ‘cooped up in this stuffy room while in the country at home — in Scotland’ (she owed it to these foolish young men who were after all quite nice, though a little under-sized, to make them understand what her father, what her mother and she herself too, for she was like them at heart, felt).

‘Are you Scotch?’ he asked.

He did not know then, he did not know who her father was; that he was John Ellis Rattray; and her mother was Catherine Macdonald.

He had stopped in Edinburgh for a night once, Mr Renshaw said.

One night in Edinburgh! And she had spent all those wonderful years there — there and at Elliotshaw, on the Northumbrian border. There she had run wild among the currant bushes; there her father’s friends had come, and she only a girl as she was, had heard the most wonderful talk of her time. She could see them still, her father, Sir Duncan Clements, Mr Rogers (old Mr Rogers was her ideal of a Greek sage), sitting under the cedar tree; after dinner in the starlight. They talked about everything in the whole world, it seemed to her now; they were too large minded ever to laugh at other people. They had taught her to revere beauty. What was there beautiful in this stuffy London room?

‘Those poor flowers,’ she exclaimed, for petals of flowers all crumpled and crushed, a carnation or two, were actually trodden under foot, but, she felt, she cared almost too much for flowers. Her mother had loved flowers: even since she was a child she had been brought up to feel that to hurt a flower was to hurt the most exquisite thing in nature. Nature had always been a passion with her; the mountains, the sea. Here in London, one looked out of the window and saw more houses — human beings packed on top of each other in little boxes. It was an atmosphere in which she could not possibly live; herself. She could not bear to walk in London and see the children playing in the streets. She was perhaps too sensitive; life would be impossible if everyone was like her, but when she remembered her own childhood, and her father and mother, and the beauty and care that were lavished on them —

‘What a lovely frock!’ said Jack Renshaw, and that seemed to her altogether wrong — for a young man to be noticing women’s clothes at all.

Her father was full of reverence for women but he never thought of noticing what they wore. And of all these girls, there was not a single one of them one could call beautiful — as she remembered her mother, — her dear stately mother, who never seemed to dress differently in summer or winter, whether they had people or were alone, but always looked herself in lace, and as she grew older, a little cap. When she was a widow, she would sit among her flowers by the hour, and she seemed to be more with ghosts than with them all, dreaming of the past, which is, Mrs Vallance thought, somehow so much more real than the present. But why. It is in the past, with those wonderful men and women, she thought, that I really live: it is they who know me; it is those people only (and she thought of the starlit garden and the trees and old Mr Rogers, and her father, in his white linen coat smoking) who understood me. She felt her eyes soften and deepen as at the approach of tears, standing there in Mrs Dalloway’s drawing-room, looking not at these people, these flowers, this chattering crowd, but at herself, that little girl who was to travel so far, picking Sweet Alice, and then sitting up in bed in the attic which smelt of pine wood reading stories, poetry. She had read all Shelly between the ages of twelve and fifteen, and used to say it to her father, holding her hands behind her back, while he shaved. The tears began, down in the back of her head to rise, as she looked at this picture of herself, and added the suffering of a lifetime (she had suffered abominably) — life had passed over her like a wheel — life was not what it had seemed then — it was like this party — to the child standing there, reciting Shelly; with her dark wild eyes. But what had they not seen later. And it was only those people, dead now, laid away in quiet Scotland, who had known her, who knew what she had it in her to be — and now the tears came closer, as she thought of the little girl in the cotton frock, how large and dark her eyes were; how beautiful she looked repeating the ‘Ode to the West Wind’; how proud her father was of her, of how great he was, and how great her mother was, and how when she was with them she was so pure so good so gifted that she had it in her to be anything. That if they had lived, and she had always been with them in that garden (which now appeared to her the place the place where she had spent her whole childhood, and it was always starlit, and always summer, and they were always sitting out under the cedar tree smoking, except that somehow her mother was dreaming alone, in her widow’s cap among her flowers — and how good and kind and respectful the old servants were, Andrewes the gardener, Jersy the cook; and old Sultan, the Newfoundland dog; and the vine, and the pond, and the pump — and Mrs Vallance looking very fierce and proud and satirical, compared her life with other people’s lives and if that life could have gone on for ever, then Mrs Vallance felt none of this — and she looked at Jack Renshaw and the girl whose clothes he admired — could have had any existence, and she would have been oh perfectly happy, perfectly good, instead of which here she was forced to listen to a young man saying — and she laughed almost scornfully and yet tears were in her eyes — that he could not bear to watch cricket matches!

Virginia Woolf (left) Vanessa Bell (right)

Ancestors – story synopsis

Mrs Vallance is at a party in London at the house of Clarissa Dalloway. She is irritated by the attitudes of a young man Jack Renshaw who says he doesn’t like to watch cricket matches and passes admiring comments on a younger woman’s dress. She soothes her irritation with a series of of reminiscences about her parents, whose cultivation she sees as superior to her current surroundings. She resuscitates nostalgic images of reverential figures in after-dinner conversations on summer nights conducted under big trees in starlight.

She feels that her parents have instilled in her a sense of beauty, and that they understood her in a way that her present company does not. Even the household servants of her childhood are romantically summoned, and she wishes the whole of this idealised past life could have continued unabated, to spare her from the current discomfort.