[Vwoolf] Fw: in the hands of the Lord

[Stuart N. Clarke]

From: Stuart N. Clarke 
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 12:35 PM
To: Jeremy Hawthorn 
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] in the hands of the Lord

I may be wrong, but I take them as purely mental statements and questions.  If aloud, is she speaking to herself?  Or to whom?  To James?  To anyone who happens to overhear?

I can’t seem to find this passage in the MS.

Although I haven’t read it since 1970, I recommend Mitchell Leaska’s rather neglected “Virginia Woolf’s Lighthouse” (Hogarth Press, 1970).

Stuart

From: Jeremy Hawthorn 
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2014 12:10 PM
To: vwoolf at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu 
Subject: [Vwoolf] in the hands of the Lord

Here's a basic question about a well-known passage from To the Lighthouse. Passage first:

Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at -- that light, for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that --"Children don’t forget, children don’t forget" -- which she would repeat and begin adding to it, It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.
    But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who had said it? Not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did not mean. 
. . .
    What brought her to say that: "We are in the hands of the Lord?" she wondered. The insincerity slipping in among the truths roused her, annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any Lord have made this world? she asked.

Now the question. Are we to assume that Mrs Ramsay actually speaks these words out loud, or are the "saying" and the "asking" purely mental operations? For a long while I have assumed that it is the latter, that Mrs Ramsay speaks these words to herself, silently. But now I am less sure. 

Any thoughts?

Jeremy H





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