"It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple..."

In "A Room of One's Own", Virginia Woolf witnesses both a man and a female sharing a cab and realizes that men and women were meant to cooperate. She then begins to consider Coleridge's claim that "a great mind is androgynous;" that there are two sides to a brain, one male and one female. She picks up a book written by a current male author and has to put it down, as the letter "I" dominates the text.

Woolf concludes that it was the Suffrage campaign that was the cause of all this. Men must reassert themselves, and thus have put an emphasis upon themselves in their writing. None of this is present in the works of Keats of Shakespeare, which is why she can read Keats and Shakespeare.

To Woolf, the solution is for authors to write not with merely a man's mind or a woman's mind, but to be "woman-manly or man-womanly." There must be a "marriage of opposites," she says. However, upon reading the text, she doesn't clarify what it is to be one of these. She speaks in vague terms of "the curtains [being] close drawn" and the author "[plucking] the petals from a rose," but I don't know what that is.

Obviously it is more than just writing about yourself (as a man does!). Is it that Woolf truly has no idea what it takes to write a novel with both sides of a brain? Does she only know what it is that's being done wrong, or knows of no true solution, or is it something else?

"A Passage to India" and the Plot Point That Nobody Really Wanted

On the trip to the caves:

"[Ronny] was not enthusiastic about the picnic, but then no more were the ladies - no one was enthusiastic, yet it took place." p. 119

As someone who is sometimes obsessed with plot mechanics, I am extremely impressed about how the Caves segment of "A Passage To India" begins. Screenwriters are told to constantly remind themselves about what their characters want. Their desires should drive the action. Forster has quite cleverly taken the dynamics already set up between Aziz, Mr. Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Quested to set the journey to the caves in motion. None of the characters wants to go to the caves, but no one wants to let anyone down, either. It's a situation completely built on the assumed desires of other characters!

The first part of the novel reads so well that I truly did not even notice the groundwork that Forster was laying. It's always impressive when a writer can create plot developments through characters and not outside forces. It's astounding when he can do it without calling attention to it happening.

Keeping Up With the Morrises

Shortly before deciding to attend Clarissa's party, Peter Walsh goes to dinner, where he impresses everyone with his conviction in ordering bartlett pears, including the Morrises. They have four kids, two motor cars, and Mr. Morris still mends the boots on Sunday!

Though "no family in the world can compare with the Morrises," they are exactly what Peter desires for himself. Getting along with the wife, having smart, well-behaved children, and two cars. Or in today's terms, perfect suburban simplicity. The fact that his choices in women to be with are a) an excellent hostess who rejected him decades ago and is already married, or b) a 24-year-old Indian woman who is also already married, (and to a major in the Indian army, no less) merely serves to emphasize what the novel has been saying throughout, and what all the other characters have known for years: that he has trouble with women.

Amusingly, one of his more prominent contradictions, his love/disdain for the upper English society, appears once again as an aspect of the Morrises that he loves ("they don't care a hang for the upper classes"), along with the fact that they "like what they like." I'm sure Peter would enjoy that quality in himself, if only he could ever figure out what it actually was that he liked.

The Clapham Sect

The quick little introduction to E.M. Forter's "Recollections" mentions his great-grandfather being a member of the Clapham Sect. Never having heard of the Clapham Sect, I decided to do some research (and by research, I mean Googling). I wasn't able to find much, but what I did find was pretty fascinating.

The Clapham Sect was a group of social reformers active from 1790 to 1830. Their chief goals were the abolition of the slave trade, the liberation of slaves, and the reform of the penal system. The majority of the members were prominent in society and wealthy. Interestingly, though, was that their actions actually had an effect. In 1807, the Slave Trade Act was passed, and in 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act. Way to go, guys!

What captivated me the most, however (and this is purely in a Six Degrees of Separation-type of way), is the myriad connections you can draw from this group to Bloomsbury. Get ready for me to blow your mind using a method that's only one step up from numerology:

So, as we know, E.M. Forster's great-grandfather, Henry Thornton was a member of the Clapham Sect. Mentioned in the introduction is that so was Vanessa and Virginia's great-grandfather. But wait, it does not end there! Also included: William Smith, a.k.a. Florence Nightingale's grandfather!

You think I am done? I am not yet done! Henry Thornton, great-grandfather to Forster, was a successful merchant banker, whose forward-thinking ideas in monetary theory were later expanded upon by none other than John Maynard Keynes.

Of course, if you're reading this, you're also wondering how relevant this is to Bloomsbury. It doesn't seem very relevant to me, either. But I do find it interesting how the wealthy continues to remain the wealthy over several generations, and I wonder what effect Henry Thornton's actions had on E.M. Forster's humanist tendencies, especially considering how tightly-knit his family seemed to be.

I don't know, guys. What do you think? Is that too big of a leap to make, between Forster and his great-grandfather?

Lytton Strachey a.k.a. LOL Lytton

I'm going to be honest with you guys: Lytton Strachey is hilarious. The guy cracks me up. His jokes are frequently used not only to amuse, but to also quickly change the reader's opinion of a person. Though he starts out good-naturedly with the playful ribbing of Nightingale as a child, saying that her "vision of heaven itself [was] filled with suffering patients to whom she was being useful," he does nothing but build up the woman and her achievements, particularly in Scutari. Strachey does not unleash his acerbic wit upon her until the final portion of the text, when he speaks of her failings" the complete lack of understanding of germ theory, her lack of compassion toward friends, her misguided ventures into writings on the metaphysical.

For example: "Yet her conception of God was certainly not orthodox. She felt towards Him as she might have felt towards a glorified sanitary engineer; and in some of her speculations she seems hardly to distinguish between the Diety and the Drains."

Ha!

Strachey finishes his biography of Nightingale by recounting her moments of regret and doubt in her later years, upon realization that she caused just as much harm as good. Though he gets some good jabs in there, in the end earns more pity than scorn.

The jokes however, get an A+.

Stop Making Sense

Talking Heads' 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense, might just be the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. Capturing the band at the height of their creativity (and still on their upward climb in terms of success), it's an entirely unique entry in the genre by one of the most unique bands ever to exist.

All of the songs performed in the film are superior to those on the albums, but the unquestionable highlight for me is "This Must Be The Place". David Byrne has a gift for tackling conventional topics without resorting to cliché, and this is the best example of it. While there are millions of love songs, I don't think any of them capture the feeling quite like he does.

I mean, seriously. Just check out this first stanza:

Home is where I want to be,
Pick me up and turn me 'round.
I feel numb, born with a weak heart,
I guess I must be having fun.
The less we say about it the better,
Make it up as we go along.
Feet on the ground, head in the sky
It's okay, I know nothing's wrong

Here, watch it for yourself: