[Vwoolf] Flipping the script on Virginia Woolf

[Alice E. Staveley]

Dear Stuart,

While I have deliberated responding en groupe to this message, I think it’s important to note that every year I teach Mrs Dalloway someone asks me whether Daisy could be mixed race (Eurasian an outdated term to their ears).  This is not naive reading or willful ignorance, but because there is sufficient textual ambiguity (pace your bullet points) around Daisy’s identity and role in the novel — a novel all about the deep human costs of categorical boxes that deleteriously hem in people’s lives — that I take their readings as teachable moments.

Textual ambiguity is a wonderful place to start unpacking all those thorny questions about representation, including racial, sexual, gendered, and class segregations, alongside their historical roots.  Why, one might ask, should we assume Daisy is white?  Statistically, as you note, that’s more probable, but then again those statistics themselves have a history students need to learn in the context of colonialist fears about Englishmen going to India without wives to keep them ‘honest’.
This can open up a rich seam of discussion about other legal and cultural prohibitions and prescriptions against miscegenation in the era, along with the general interrogation of the ‘marriage plot'  in Mrs Dalloway.

Given my students’ responses, it is not to me surprising that a contemporary Australian writer of Goan-Anglo Indian heritage might herself be inspired to find in creative adaptation of Woolf’s famous novel a form of reinterpretation that is more than mercenary.  I have not read her book, but I believe, as I think the spirit of your later messages imply, it could help us all take a hard look at just how limiting are fixed categorical boxes, however much the 'nightmare of history’ reminds us of their continuing presence.

Best wishes
Alice

Alice Staveley, D.Phil.
Senior Lecturer
Department of English
Stanford University
Director | Honors English
Director | Digital Humanities Minor
Co-Founder https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.modernistarchives.com__;!!KGKeukY!2inlIeW3w_4VAb66R45ANjZAQ1E8A2_vDx3tc_G_UeKinc3JEJOliRBllIHTtoD6mmakcmYnIH0DOWS5U-15HQeH1A$ 


On May 2, 2022, at 2:49 AM, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu<mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:

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Dear oh dear oh dear.  So  Daisy is a Eurasian, is she?  I expect the author was tempted by the ref. to Daisy's being "very dark" - and ran with it. Shall we speculate on how many Eurasians were publicly married to majors in the Indian Army at that time?  Daisy doesn't seem to be ostracised, since there are refs. to Majors Orde and Simmons (or is he her husband? the author thinks so).  Peter Walsh has confided in Mrs Burgess in India, who has pointed out the disadvantages of his marrying Daisy, but she has made no ref. to the enormous additional problems he would face in marrying a divorced mixed-race woman.

Instead of "There’s something wonderfully subversive about taking a well-known Western text and flipping it inside out to reveal societal truths", it's sounds more like piggy-backing on Woolf to sell copies of this (fantasy) novel.

Stuart

-----Original Message----- From: Kristin Czarnecki via Vwoolf
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2022 10:04 PM
To: Virginia Woolf
Subject: [Vwoolf] Flipping the script on Virginia Woolf

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A new book explores the character of Daisy from MD.

Cheers,

Kristin

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/flipping-the-script-on-virginia-woolf-20220421-p5af19.html__;!!KGKeukY!w50Arb0a5ofxhJOyZPHpOsXJraydeip_jzZtDOaYSEyFlmGP2tmXSSwCzC0khnSfwRUDOj5Cxidp6LmOjPFABwtS$


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