A Downpouring of Immense Darkness

"something out of harmony with this
jocundity and this serenity" (133).

Points for Reflection

"Lapin and Lapinova" (1938; 1939), pp.261-68

1. When Rosalind changes her pet name for Ernest from “Lapin” (French) to “Lappin” (English), does this make the term of endearment more playful and familiar, or less so?
2. Is there anything about Rosalind’s and Earnest’s shared fantasy that, from the outset, seems less than ideal?
3. Which of those at the wedding anniversary dinner table does Rosalind imaginatively link, not to an imagined animal or fictive character, but to a decaying building?
4. Is it impossible to discover the problem that besets Rosalind two years into the story, or can you unearth it?
5. What alternative response from her partner do you think Rosalind sought at the story’s close?

Mrs. Dalloway (1925), "Time Passes"

1. In “Time Passes,” does darkness carry more of either positive or negative connotations? [Dana R]
2. How does Woolf go about evoking WWI?
3. Is death a malevolent presence in Woolf’s novel? [Katie S]
4. Does Woolf’s narrator find in Nature any teleological evidence of Divine design and care?
5. What sort of event immediately follows each consideration of the possibility of “divine goodness” and “divine bounty”?
6. What array of arguments does Woolf set up against belief in Divine compassion?
7. What answer does “Time Passes” provide to the narrator’s question, “Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began?” (134 top).
8. Does this section add anything substantive to the novel’s treatment of religious faith?
9. At what point does Nature begin to gain a stronghold in the house it has been casually exploring and assaulting?
10. At what point in this chapter did you begin to become anxious for the well-being of the remaining characters?
11. Is Nature "red in tooth and claw" in this section of the novel, or a friend to humanity?
12. On what precondition does “loveliness” appear to depend?
13. Does solitude appear to provide a salve for the ills of life (132-34)?
14. Does section VII concern Nature generally, or something more specific?
15. Distinguish between Lily Briscoe's and Mr. Carmichael's separate feelings about returning to the Ramsays' beach house.
16. Reexamine Mr. Bankes's private, prognosticatory names for the Ramsay kids (21-22). Do these names accurately assess and predict the course of any of these various individuals' lives?
17. Why might Woolf introduce character deaths in brackets?
18. Is Mrs. McNab literally witless?
19. Does Woolf’s description of Mrs. McNab reflect a prejudicial ageism, or is her description merely, objectively, accurate in its details?
20. Which of the Ramsay children die in this section, and why is this important?
21. Is the altered state of the house envisioned by the narrator “if the feather had fallen” preferable, in any way, to the actual state of the house and its inhabitants detailed in “The Window” (138, 139)?
22. Does this chapter's implicit attitude towards change echo that of Mrs. Ramsay in the previous section?
23. How do the events of this section alter our re-reading of Mrs. Ramsay's optimism concerning friends' and family members' interconnectedness after death?
24. Return again to chapter thirteen of "The Window." What function does the skull in the children's bedroom serve (114), and is Mrs. Ramsay’s covering it with a shawl pregnant with symbolism?

"A Sketch of the Past" from Moments of Being (April 1939 - Nov 1940; 1976), PDF

"April 1939" [assigned for ENGL 439: Woolf seminar]

1. Does the frequency and directness with which Woolf draws attention to the malleability of her own memories increase or decrease the weight and power of those memories?
2. Distinguish between moments where Woolf is recounting and actively reshaping/amending her own memories, and sections where she is imaginatively creating scenes, thoughts, and motivations to which she never had direct access. Does she place too much weight on her powers of extrapolation, given the limited data with which she sometimes works?
3. Woolf mentions a number of places (parks, homes) in which her family spent considerable over the years. Which ones appear the most vital, in terms of her personal development?
4. What does Woolf mean by "non-being," and do you agree with her claim that that the novelists Austen, Trollope, Thackeray, Dickens, and Tolstoy have successfully captured/rendered both moments of being and moments of non-being (82)?
5. Do you agree that the desire to both receive and then explain a "shock" is what makes one a writer (83-84)? What of the hidden pattern that she occasionally, in rapture-like states, identifies behind/within the canvas of life (84)? Are her ideas too abstract to convince?
6. What is Woolf’s “philosophy” about life? (She hesitates to use the word.)
7. Did Woolf appear to treasure or fear solitude in her youth?
8. Identify passages where Woolf praises the power of words, and passages where he recognizes their limitations.
9. What might Woolf mean by the claim that there is no Beethoven, no Shakespeare, and no God?

Other Entries [not required for ENGL 439]

1. What personality traits did Woolf so value in Julia (her mother) and Stella (her half-sister)?
2. At what points in the process of reminiscing does Woolf illuminate the inferior position of women in British society?
3. Do you think Woolf's need for peace and a "smooth" present in order to feel the "present sliding over the depths of the past" (114) is a function of her own psychology, or is this a precondition shared by all of us?
4. Why might the reflection about Jim Stephen, his love for Stella, and his fatal madness be an important memory for Virginia (115)?
5. What kind of love does Woolf liken to a "ruby" and to lyrical music, and why does she call this ecstatic love "bodiless" (122)?
6. What impact did WWII have on Woolf's artistic craft and on daily life?
7. Is Woolf's opinion about religion--as alluded to in this piece--monolithic and narrowly defined, or variegated and fluxuating?
8. At one point, Woolf considers whether her tendency to create "scenes" out of her memories--instead of relaying them in unorganized fashion complete with every related detail--is "the origin of [her] writing impulse" (143). What do you think? Is she unique in this, or does everyone do the same?
9. Does Woolf locate any redeeming qualities in her father, or is he an emblem of all that is worst in rigidly patriarchal, Victorian England?
10. Does Woolf express any sympathy for her father, or merely rancor?
11. Does Woolf admit to any similarities between the Victorian and Edwardian eras? Does she identify any practical benefits of the "Victorian manner"?

The End of Dinner (1913)
Jules Alexandre Grun

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu