On Virginia Woolf's Street Haunting
Mon 06 July 2009
Monique Jerrems, Communications
In her personal essay, Street Haunting: A London Adventure, Virginia Woolf subverted traditional aesthetics of truth in non-fiction.
She artfully constructed a multifaceted, more realistic representation of herself by using creative devices such as stream of consciousness and multiple perspectives.
By breaking the boundaries of traditional non-fiction, Woolf demonstrated that non-fiction writing could, and should, be as artful as fiction.
Woolf asserted that classical conventions of non-fiction writing restricted readers from truly understanding the author (Briggs 1995, p. 262).
Traditionally, essays began with the personal pronoun “I” (Brosnan 1999, p. 113).
The “I” positioned the reader to interpret the text as a truthful construction of the author’s character, supported by a sequential development of opinions (Brosnan 1999, p. 139). However, in Street Haunting, Woolf demonstrated that by using “I” the author confounded reality (Wussow 1994, p. 2).
“The number of books in the world is infinite…one catches a word passing and from a chance phrase fabricates a lifetime. It is about a woman called Kate that they are talking, how “I said to her quite straight last night…If you don’t think I’m worth a penny stamp, I said…” But who Kate is, and how the crisis in their friendship that penny stamp refers, we shall never know; for Kate sinks under the warmth of their volubility… (Woolf 1995, p. 263).”
Here, Woolf rejected the singular narrator’s ability to depict reality (Wussow 1994, p. 3).
By using “I”, the man in the street was ignoring the other perspectives contributing to his story.
Woolf replaced the initial “I” in her essay with “no one” (Woolf 1995, p. 256), and only introduced herself as “I” to disguise her true motive; to discover the other elements of herself that could not be developed through traditional essay form.
“'Really I must buy a pencil’, as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure…(Woolf 1995, p. 256).”
By dismissing the unified self, Woolf launched her own style of self-representation, allowing the reader to interpret her personality (Ayers 2004, p. 99).
Woolf’s dimensions of self were explored through artful devices (Goldman 1965, p. 275).
She used the stream-of-consciousness technique to demonstrate how physical representation was more effective when combined with psychological processes (Squier 1983, p. 494).
London was used as a metaphor for the free, subconscious mind; London’s discontinuous, “dashing stream of urban life shakes the city dweller loose from habit to entertain, transform” and liberate (Squier 1983, p. 493).
“As we step out of the house [into the streets of London] on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers (Woolf 1995, p. 256).”
In the streets of London, Woolf’s thoughts were not bound by conscious logic, and the subject can change several times before the end of a sentence.
Woolf’s multiple perspectives indicated how the reader’s eye was trained to focus on superficial representations, denying the true aspects of personality (Wussow 1994, p. 3).
“The eye…seeks colour and basks in warmth…The thing it cannot do…is to compose these trophies in such a way as to bring out the more obscure angles and relationships…folding up the bright paraphernalia of the streets and withdrawing to some duskier chamber of the being, where we may ask, as we raise our left foot obediently upon the stand “What, then, is it like to be a dwarf?”(Woolf 1995, p. 258).”
Consequently, Woolf invited the reader to abandon traditional forms of reading non-fiction by following her personal stream-of-consciousness and examining multiple perspectives.
Woolf’s essay, Street Haunting: A London Adventure, challenged traditional forms of non-fiction.
She dynamically represented her many selves by weaving her essay with creative devices, including stream of conscious and multiple perspectives.
Woolf’s Street Haunting was evidence that effective non-fiction writing should be as artful as fiction.
Sources
Ayers, D 2004, Modernism: a short introduction, Blackwell, Carlton.
Briggs, J. 1995. ‘Virginia Woolf and the Proper Writing of Lives’, in Batchelor, J. (ed.), The Art of Literary Biography, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Brosnan, L. 1999. Reading Virginia Woolf’s Essays and Journalism, Edinburgh University Press, the United Kingdom.
Goldman, M. 1965. ‘Virginia Woolf and the Critic as Reader’, in Modern Language Association, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 275-284.
Squier, S. 1983. ‘The London Scene: gender and class in Virginia Woolf’s London’ in Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 488-500.
Woolf, V. 1995. ‘Street Haunting: A London Adventure, in Lopate, P. (ed.) The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical era to Present, Anchor Books, New York.
Wussow, H. 1994. Virginia Woolf and the Problematic Nature of the Photographic Image’, in Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 1-14.
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Submitted Comments
Such an interesting topic and a fantastic insight. Thanks for sharing.
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