[Vwoolf] Flipping the script
Gretchen Gerzina
ozma at sover.net
Tue May 3 09:59:48 EDT 2022
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Hello everyone,
The important thing to remember in all of this is that at the time Woolf was writing, the term "Anglo-Indian" was used only for white English people living in India. It wasn't until much later that the term changed to refer to mixed-race English/Indian people, which is the way it is used today--and the way it is generally defined now in dictionaries. But it was not used that way when Mrs. Dalloway was written, as readers at that time would have understood.
Similarly, the word "Creole" used to refer to all people, including white people, who were born and raised in the Caribbean. In the 18th century, it was used mainly for the plantocracy, who sent their (white) Caribbean offspring to live or be educated in Britain.
As a mixed-race person who is keenly aware of these linguistic nuances, and teaches and writes about race in the UK, I think it's important to understand how these words were used and understood at the time of the writing in which they appear, and how that differs from today's usage.
--Gretchen Gerzina
On 5/2/22, 8:59 PM, "vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu on behalf of vwoolf-request at lists.osu.edu" <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu on behalf of vwoolf-request at lists.osu.edu> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Flipping the script on Virginia Woolf (Stuart N. Clarke)
2. Inclusivity (Stuart N. Clarke)
3. Re: Flipping the script on Virginia Woolf (Alice E. Staveley)
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 10:49:35 +0100
From: "Stuart N. Clarke" <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>
To: <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Flipping the script on Virginia Woolf
Message-ID: <227D222ACACE416EBBD5E610BC2C0E47 at StuartHP>
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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$
Sent from my iPad
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 11:26:31 +0100
From: "Stuart N. Clarke" <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>
To: <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: [Vwoolf] Inclusivity
Message-ID: <E7550605DF6848649FD24F9E22A2B096 at StuartHP>
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Wasn?t some reviewer/commentator quoted on this list not long ago, saying that great writers were never inclusive, or some such rubbish?
What we do have to remember that inclusivity as we understand it nowadays is a very recent way of looking at the world (pace Mrs Swithin and Prof Godbole). Previously, distinguishing people one from the other ? exclusivity ? was how one looked at life.
?*doct(o)ress.* It is a serious inconvenience that neither form (-tress would be the better) has been brought into any but facetious use as a prefixed title? (H. W. Fowler, ?A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), p. 120a
?What has given Jenufa this strange idea, that her dress is so plain and sombre on her wedding day??
?What, Jenufa? All the finest gentry dress plainly and simply when they go to the altar!?
?Gentle folk have their own fashions and customs, but we are only simple people! I?d never dream of being wed without my bridal crown and ribbons never! Never!?
(Libretto to Janacek?s opera)
Of course, in 3G Woolf deplores the uniforms and badges of distinction that set men off from one another. Of course, she writes: ?it seems to me the wrong way to live, drawing chalk marks round ones feet, and saying ... you can?t come in? (L no. 3111). But she?s a long way from inclusivity in the modern sense.
I?m was reminded about isolated people were from one another, when I was reading recently two collections I?ve had for 45 years, ?My Cambridge? and ?My Oxford? (I hadn?t realised how miserable Nigel Nicolson was at Balliol).
?it was not till my first term at Cambridge that I spoke to my first Jew and met my first black man (from Blackpool and Jamaica respectively)? (John Vaizey (1929-84), went up to Queens? in 1948).
There could be an advantage if you were gay: ?I think I can safely say that, until I went to Oxford, I had never known anyone of working-class background. There had, of course, been my London promiscuous sexual encounters. Many of these had been with cockney working-class young men. But this life which had begun before I was sixteen was a world as separate from my daily life as were my dreams ... Apart from that, the only working-class people I had known were servants ? and, given my family?s near penury, these were not many. I had never known anyone well who came from north of the Home Counties; and, apart from one visit with my father to Scotland ... I had never penetrated into England north of Hampstead? (Angus Wilson (1913-91, went up to Merton in 1935).
Stuart
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 3 May 2022 00:59:10 +0000
From: "Alice E. Staveley" <staveley at stanford.edu>
To: "Stuart N. Clarke" <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>
Cc: "vwoolf at lists.osu.edu" <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Flipping the script on Virginia Woolf
Message-ID: <14324AE1-CED9-4D46-B055-526F0F789A1C at stanford.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
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$
Sent from my iPad
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