which, for reasons of his own, he desired to be exalted and infallible, and of such independence that it was only in the case of Ralph Denham that it swerved from its high, swift flight, but where he was concerned, though fastidious at first, she finally swooped from her eminence to crown him with her approval (p. 19).
Another important stylistic feature of the novel is Woolf ’s use of leitmotifs—frequently repeated words that call our attention to important themes and that gain new weight and meaning with each appearance. Two words, feelings and consciousness, occur countless times throughout Night and Day. The result is not only poetic resonance but historical context as well, for feelings were of the utmost concern to Woolf ’s Bloomsbury circle, just as they are to characters in the novel (“What is happiness?” Ralph asks in chapter II), and the nature of consciousness had recently been made the subject of intensive study by Sigmund Freud, whose works were first published in English by the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press.
And of course the binaries of the novel’s title make themselves everywhere apparent. If “day” is the comforting clarity of norm and tradition, “night” is the alluring murk of vision and innovation. If Mrs. Hilbery’s speech is sunlight, then Katharine’s silence is shadow. The different literary tastes that the characters profess—Rodney enjoys Alexander Pope, while Katharine prefers the brooding Dostoevsky—are as opposite as sun and moon, too. And the contrast between the novel’s two couples vividly illustrates the poles of its title: Rodney’s fondness for Mozart and his residence in “high eighteenth-century houses” (p. 62), and Cassandra’s likeness to “a French lady of distinction in the eighteenth century” (p. 299) (not to mention her sharing a name with Jane Austen’s sister), could not be more different from Ralph and Katharine’s tempestuous romance, as the following conversation between the latter pair shows:
“Rodney seems to know his own mind well enough,” he said almost bitterly. The music, which had ceased, had now begun again, and the melody of Mozart seemed to express the easy and exquisite love of the two upstairs.
“Cassandra never doubted for a moment. But we—” she glanced at him as if to ascertain his position, “we see each other only now and then—”
“Like lights in a storm—”
“In the midst of a hurricane,” she concluded, as the window shook beneath the pressure of the wind. They listened to the sound in silence (p. 369).
But if Woolf’s use of leitmotifs gives Night and Day a Wagnerian density, her sparkling wit comes straight out of Shakespearean comedy. The plot’s intricacies—two couples falling in and out of love; frequent eavesdropping; escape to a “green world,” which brings perspective on the dilemmas of urban life—could have been lifted from plays such as As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Wearing her literary debt on her sleeve, Woolf calls constant attention to these parallels, whether in the form of Mrs. Hilbery’s theories about Shakespeare’s sonnets, or the novel’s many comparisons between Katharine and Rosalind, the lively heroine of As You Like It. (Mrs. Hilbery remarks, “she is Shakespeare—Rosalind, you know” (p. 154.) And when characters step back from the action to comment on its madness—Rodney alone calls it a “season of lunacy” (p. 358), dismisses his love of Cassandra as “a dream” (p. 358), and exclaims to Ralph, “My God... what fools we both are!” (p. 347)—they might be paraphrasing Puck’s astonished conclusion, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (act 3, scene 2). Far from being charming embellishments, these Shakespearean echoes serve a vital function in the noveclass="underline" They allow Woolf (long before her critics did) to highlight the artificial elements of her plot, and to balance its more solemn moments with a welcome lightness of touch.
Woolf ’s contemporary George Gershwin observed in the song “But Not for Me” that “Every happy plot ends with a marriage knot,” and readers who have consumed their fair share of classic novels can make educated guesses about the conclusion of Night and Day. Woolf ’s later work—its method and purpose, its structure and style—may be less predictable and more dazzlingly new. But this one, in its way, dazzles too, and it would therefore be a great shame to view it as a minor ball of fire in the constellation of her novels, rather than a bright star giving off its own unique and radiant light.
Rachel Wetzsteon received her doctorate in English from Columbia University in 1999 and is Assistant Professor of English at William Paterson University. She has published two books of poems, The Other Stars and Home and Away, and has received various awards for her poetry. She also wrote the introduction and notes for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. Wetzsteon currently lives in New York City.
To
Vanessa Bell
BUT, LOOKING FOR A PHRASE,
I FOUND NONE TO STAND
BESIDE YOUR NAME
CHAPTER I
IT WAS A SUNDAY evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight. But although she was silent, she was evidently mistress of a situation which was familiar enough to her, and inclined to let it take its way for the six hundredth time, perhaps, without bringing into play any of her unoccupied faculties. A single glance was enough to show that Mrs Hilbery was so rich in the gifts which make tea-parties of elderly distinguished people successful, that she scarcely needed any help from her daughter, provided that the tiresome business of teacups and bread and butter was discharged for her.
Considering that the little party had been seated round the tea-table for less than twenty minutes, the animation observable on their faces, and the amount of sound they were producing collectively, were very creditable to the hostess. It suddenly came into Katharine’s mind that if some one opened the door at this moment he would think that they were enjoying themselves; he would think, ‘What an extremely nice house to come into!’ and instinctively she laughed, and said something to increase the noise, for the credit of the house presumably, since she herself had not been feeling exhilarated. At the very same moment, rather to her amusement, the door was flung open, and a young man entered the room. Katharine, as she shook hands with him, asked him, in her own mind, ‘Now, do you think we’re enjoying ourselves enormously?’... ‘Mr Denham, mother,’ she said aloud, for she saw that her mother had forgotten his name.
That fact was perceptible to Mr Denham also, and increased the awkwardness which inevitably attends the entrance of a stranger into a room full of people much at their ease, and all launched upon sentences. At the same time, it seemed to Mr Denham as if a thousand softly padded doors had closed between him and the street outside. A fine mist, the etherealized essence of the fog, hung visibly in the wide and rather empty space of the drawing-room, all silver where the candles were grouped on the tea-table, and ruddy again in the firelight. With the omnibuses and cabs still running in his head, and his body still tingling with his quick walk along the streets and in and out of traffic and foot-passengers, this drawing-room seemed very remote and still; and the faces of the elderly people were mellowed, at some distance from each other, and had a bloom on them owing to the fact that the air in the drawing-room was thickened by blue grains of mist. Mr Denham had come in as Mr Fortescue, the eminent novelist,1 reached the middle of a very long sentence. He kept this suspended while the new-comer sat down, and Mrs Hilbery deftly joined the severed parts by leaning towards him and remarking: