The Glamour of Empire

I’m reading Virginia Woolf’s The Years, the only one of her novels I haven’t read. Fascinating because it fills in some of the blanks in To The Lighthouse in a literal way that in the end may be less effective: the mother’s death, which is referred to obliquely, in a parenthesis, in Lighthouse, is here rendered in all its detail: “Mrs. Pargiter was asleep…Her face was pouched and heavy; the skin was stained with brown patches; the hair which has been red was now white, save that there were queer yellow patches in it… Bare of all rings save her wedding ring, her fingers alone seemed to indicate that she had entered the private world of illness.” Daughter Rose observing her mother, “longed for her to die.” At the same time, she knew that her mother’s death “was the greatest disaster that could happen.”

This chapter is set in 1880 during the sunset of the British Empire in India, yet Woolf, no supporter of colonial power, could yet observe the glamor of British officers in uniform, drinking together in the officers’ club in Delhi. I feel a tinge of that excitement when I think of the British Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India, my great-great uncle on my mother’s side; he was a very tall man and in his robes would have inspired my instinctive reverence, although the first story I heard about him related how the monkeys sat on his windowsill and laughed at him when he said his prayers. The absurdity of an Anglican prelate trying to convert Hindus and Brahmins to his religion doesn’t entirely negate the glamor of this image, and of course a sense of humor helps the medicine go down.

The death of the mother is the first act of significance in The Waves. Virginia Woolf was thirteen when her mother died, and in her diary remembered laughing “behind the hand that was meant to hide my tears” while acknowledging that Julia’s death “was the greatest disaster that could happen.” Only a great novelist can combine the disparate and contradictory emotional elements that make up grief; often it seems that something histrionic is included, as Delia, one of the daughters observes in The Waves when she sees her father stumbling out of the bedroom where Julia has just died, fists clenched, calling her name. You did that very well, Delia told him as he passed… It was like a scene in a play.” Her remark, without quotation marks, indicates that she thought but did not say this.

Woolf also brilliantly describes the suppressed erotic attraction between men in The Waves and elsewhere. Edward, Delia’s brother, is at Oxford; after an evening of drinking with two friends, he locks himself in his bedroom:

“Edward!” said Ashley, rattling the door handle. His voice was sharp and appealing.

“Goodnight,” said Edward sharply, and eventually Ashley goes away. Edward thinks, with relish, “What a row there will be tomorrow.” But the reader can be sure that nothing will be resolved since neither young men can express his feelings.

We have moved on from that stalled point but the past is always with us.

In Writing Virginia Woolf