CM3 TEXT commentary Flashcards
Intro
⇒ In medias res beginning
In spite of the lightness of the conversation, it is in fact a rather anguish conversation, they are irritated. Undercurrent of fright, anguish, darkness
⇒ Two women who question their status and wonder about marriage : revolutionary in itself.
In medias res opening
Gudrun and Ursula are introduced in a fairly formal way thanks to the short paragraph as if they were part of a composition, a picture almost.
The window in WIL plays the same role, introspective look, we get to know what is happening inside the house + inside their mind + them talking about marriage also tells us about their social position.
Indeterminacy of the time frame but in the morning most probably. Place defined and defining : not their home, their father’s. Morning room
The immediacy of the dialogue confuses the reader.
→ How could they think about NOT getting married “not to” = negation du seul statut possible = ++
Small paragraph of introduction and then introspection → What is important is what’s going inside their minds and what they are saying, what they are doing matters less.
But mostly they are static and silent : usual passivity ascribed to young women. Very general topic, fairly traditional : we expect two young women to discuss their expectations, but must have sounded unnatural o the reader in the 1920s
Still new (new women)
First paradox : they are said to be “mostly silent” but then a fairly long dialogue follows.
Narratorial intrusions hold on the dialogue.
→ Narrator is always present. He interrupts the characters “she darkened slightly” “she paused slightly irritated” = coming and going btw inside and outside.
L28 : idée d’une fin, on est au début d’un dialogue et on nous montre déjà la fin : fin pas plus en aboutissement que n’importe quelle autre fin dans le roman car la conversation reprend.
⇒ No real communication btw the 2 : failure and yet, the conv goes on and picks up again.
In fact, no real conversation,
Gudrun = the one who asks questions
“This brought up conv to a close” l28 failure to communicate
Yet it picks up again. Outer bearings of the sister mirrors their thoughts : integrity of the characters : they are what they think.
, rather a series of remarks, of haphazard reflections, no real understanding between the sisters. Perpetual questioning. Questions answered by other questions. Dialogue of the deaf. Bakhtinian “discursive polyphony”:
Bakhtinian “discursive polyphony”
Him and Lawrence had the same ambitions for the novel: it is the only form of human discourse that can embrace the totality of experience
Bakhtin dit que texte fait entendre plsuieurs voix : this may apply to WIL because has various voices.
Two sisters
Very clearly different personalities : diff activities meant to tell us about their psyche
Embroidery : adorning, adding details , following a pre-defined pattern. Design comes first. 2 activities : can be done and undone ⇒ only for decorative purposes. Cf Penelope vs Ulysses : embroidery is a typically feminine activity, fidelity, waiting for your man to come back // ursula’s loyalty to her man
Each is holding on her activity on a symptomatic way : Gudrun is on her knee VS Ursula in her lap : gudrun tient son dessin à distance sur les genoux
Contrast btw the 2 “contrasted”
She is using a pencil = drawing in black and white ⇒ Gudrun is original, is different. Ursula is perhaps more traditional.
Two sisters
Very clearly different personalities : diff activities meant to tell us about their psyche
Embroidery : adorning, adding details , following a pre-defined pattern. Design comes first. 2 activities : can be done and undone ⇒ only for decorative purposes. Cf Penelope vs Ulysses : embroidery is a typically feminine activity, fidelity, waiting for your man to come back // ursula’s loyalty to her man
Each is holding on her activity on a symptomatic way : Gudrun is on her knee VS Ursula in her lap : gudrun tient son dessin à distance sur les genoux
Contrast btw the 2 “contrasted”
They are characters who are facing challenges :
challenges of their own independence and of status of a woman. Their only choice : whether to get married or non single = ++ rare & daring a young women to remain single = ++ rare & daring
⇒ Ursula is hesitating “ I might but I’m not sure” But ++ calm VS Ursula
Ursula and Gudrun
Ursula : approximations, “slightly” “not really” “more likely”, adverbs expressing doubt and hesitation. Calm and considerate “I might (…) but I’m not sure” (l16).
Gudrun : assertions, “really wants to”, passionate character who wants things. L17 : “she wanted to be quite definite ”. Passionate, sanguine character : power of annihilations can “rub things out”
Rubs part of her drawing out (l29) While Ursula go on patiently with her stitching.
Gudrun goes from hot to cold and vice versa : intensity. She “flushes dark” (l33, she “darkens” l13 : polyptoton
Yet common lot of the girls delineated : daughters of Artemis // Diana, twin sister of Apollo : Her arrows were fatal : is said to be the one who kills women who die in childbirth. Play on words when Ursula says “I’d marry like a shot” (l40)
Hebe : personification of youth : role of servant or daughter of the house (from Greek Hebe : “young maturity” or “bloom of youth”. Their age : not really young maidens. Still under the father’s yoke.
Polyptoton
use same root but use diff grammatical category dark /darken = variation in repetition
Modern ennui
In spite of their common plight (“both” only twice) l 44 & l48, and their laughing together (complicity, mutual understanding of the heart but fright too) two women experiencing a kind of modern ennui, the alternation of their first names implies a certain discordance.
// A room with a view
Reminiscent of Augustus Egg’s painting, The Travelling Companions, 1862
Here is a picture representing the 2 aspects of femininity which were discussed.
It is a dialogical composition between the left hand side and right side. If you separate the picture into 2 halves they are equal. Looks also like a triptyque because windows : strict outline.
⇒ women are travellin south = grand tour = educated women
With the background from mountain to the sea + contrast to the foreground with the incarnation of subdued femininity, intellectual girl who is reading which gloved hands, sits isolated in her own world with a little poway?powsy? next to her.
Red plume of the hat = sexualized representation
VS on the left, basket of oranges and apple = rpz sexuality + only prostitute don’t tie their hair = idea of a kind of abandonment to a kind of forbidden sensuousness.
There is this thought of when you travel abroad you lose your virginity? Values ? feminity ?
⇒ the girl before you travel and the girl after you travel
Although this implies femininity, you can’t be both at the same time
Web of complex imagery conveying an impression of alienation and antagonism
Nothing is clear-cut, beneath appearances things are neither easy nor harmonious
Contrast btw what the girls want and the impetuousness of their demands and their not knowing which path to choose.
Modals and adverbs of doubt
Paradoxical text which also plays with the reader’s expectation
Gudrun seems passionately determined and strong-willed but the narrator’s comments on her seem to believe the reader’s feeling. Yet the narrator says she is “passive l50 : yet she is the one who prompts her sister to answer and plays a rather active part in this passage.
⇒ Contrast btw her attitude and comment the narrator has on her = blurring portrait
She is said to be “soft-skinned”, “soft-limbed”, yet her irritation is palpable
Her clothes evoke the Victorian heroine rather than the modern woman the narrator says she is. The lace, tuches and silky stuff contrasts with her exclusive bareness of manner.
Character full of contradictions : longs to get married but comes back home when she was leading a brilliant life among the artistic circles of London : “leading a studio life” (l58)
Character who despite her willingness to be quite definite never manages to be so : “half sly siling”, “half-anguish” (l61) (her last description)
To a certain extent, Ursula who is more reserved shares these characteristics. (last words about Ursula : “Ursula was afraid”
Under the lightness of their conversation : worry and concern of lonely hearts :
his text is a mixture of amusement and fright of fun and anguish.
Best epitome : the figure of oxymoron : (brings together 2 opposite ideas) : “I liked him awfully” “an awful nice man” “fearfully tempted”, “temptation not to”…
Constant hesitation, important of liminal spaces (see “Threshold”) : notion of impending excitement and danger, “great expectations” revisited.
⇒ GE and WIL share this idea of Buildings roman
