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Dear Kesia,
What do you think about The Voyage Out? To me the best thing about it is the richness of the text. As Nancy pointed out in her presentation with the "yellow" references, the text is loaded with meaning. I read somewhere that Virginia Woolf told one of her acquaintances that one had to pay attention to her words to know her story. I think she writes in a way that her words are not accidents, but part of a whole meaning.
I have notices that Woolf uses a lot of animal imagery in The Voyage Out. When I get the opportunity, I plan to look more closely at the stuffed spotted leopard at the hotel (look in the text of course). I have also noticed that Woolf mentions birds in her text. For some reason Terence seems to be associated with Owls. When he is watching Rachel and Helen from the shadows, Rachel is talking, then the text reads, "and there was a long pause, in which a little owl called first here, then there, as it moved from tree to garden" (209). Later, when Terence tells Rachel his first name, she says that it sounds like the "cry of an owl" (252). As they continue to talk, Terence says, "My mother thought music wasn’t manly for boys; She wanted me to kill rats and birds" (253). Of course killing rats and birds is the occupation of owls. So it appears that his mother taught him to be a predator who was too manly to study music.
About the kiss – I do not think Rachel over reacted. I think her reaction was normal for the situation. Even with her exposure to the questionable actions of her father, she is still a young, naïve woman who had just been kissed by a married man. That whole scene is an interesting one. Ironically, Richard Dalloway, the man who never allows his wife to talk politics (68), is commenting on the power of a young woman to do whatever she wants, to have "the whole world at her feet." He stresses her "inestimable power – for good or for evil" and confesses that she tempts him (80). A few pages earlier he had remarked to Helen, "It’s humiliating to find what a slave is to one’s body in this world" (77). Maybe Dalloway is afraid of, as well as attracted to, that power. Therefore, his instinct may be to conquer her. He is a politician.
After the kiss, when Rachel leans upon the ship’s rail to calm herself, we see, "Far out between the waves little black and white sea-birds were riding. Rising and falling with smooth and graceful movements in the hollows of the waves they seemed singularly detached and unconcerned" (80). This passage reminded me of the fish metaphor in Moments of Being. As the fish found his way in the stream, so the sea-birds calmly rode the waves. Maybe Woolf, as well, searched for this calm, peaceful journey through life.
Another interesting image in The Voyage Out is that of the pebble striking water to create a ripple effect. I think Woolf believed her writing could be like that pebble. Maybe she was just one writer, and a woman writer at that, but her work certainly did cause a ripple that as had a lasting effect.
Alice Stapler
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