Suicide in The Hours

While reading "Mrs. Dalloway," Laura Brown thinks about Virginia Woolf and wonders, "How...could someone who was able to write a sentence like that - who was able to feel everything contained in a sentence like that - come to kill herself? What in the world is wrong with people?" (Cunningham 41).

Ugh. Suicide bothers me so. I have often wondered the same thing - why do people commit suicide? Well, here are my thoughts...

It is possible Virginia Woolf committed suicide for the same reason as Richard, and for the same reason that Laura attempted suicide. I believe that all three felt that they had lost control of their lives and wanted to do something to regain control.

In a study on suicide notes*, researchers discovered a note written by a 33 year old man that read, "Do realise [sic] it is my choice whether to go on or not. I have reached the stage where I say "No". I CHOOSE to cease to exist."

Similarly, Virginia Woolf felt out of control. In her suicide note to Leonard Woolf, she wrote, "I feel certain I am going mad again...I begin to hear voices, and cant [sic] concentrate...You see I cant even write this properly. I cant read" (Cunningham 6).

When Laura Brown checks into the hotel room to read "Mrs. Dalloway" in peace, Laura Brown thinks about suicide: "[S]he is glad to know (for somehow, suddenly, she knows) that it is possible to stop living...It would be as simple, she thinks, as checking into a hotel. It would be as simple as that" (Cunningham 152). The very thought of suicide comforts Laura Brown, as it makes her feel that she does have control in her overly idyllic life.

When Richard commits suicide, he leaves behind a life devoid of control - a life of suffering through AIDs and lamenting his mother's absence throughout his life. A very telling moment is when he says to Clarissa (shortly before slipping out of the window), "'I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the hour after that, and the hour after that'" (Cunningham 197).

Yikes, great topic for a final blog, right?

*McClelland, L., S. Reicher, and N. Booth "A last defence: the negotiation of blame within suicide notes." Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 10.3 (2000): 225-240. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2009.

Cave

While reading about Mrs. Moore's experience in the Marabar cave, I thought of a number of things, one of which was Plato's cave theory.

Plato used a cave to explain man's perception of reality. Picture this:

A group of people are sitting in chairs, facing the back wall of a cave. All they can see are the shadows cast from things moving outside the entrance to the cave. However, they are unaware of the entrance, and believe the shadows to be reality. They attempt to explain these shadows, and become very comfortable with their explanations.

However, once in a while, one person will turn around in their chair, and see that there is an opening in the cave. He will then alert the rest of the group, and he will be labelled as crazy and become ostracized from the group.

Once in a great, great while, one person will get up from his chair and walk outside of the cave. He will come back and tell the rest of the group about all that he has seen, and about the existence of an entire world outside the cave.

Upon hearing this, the group will kill him.

I thought of this allegory when I read about the terrifying echo of the caves. All of man's ideas and even his habits are taken by the cave and turned into "boum." "Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce 'boum' " (147).

Throughout history, man has attempted to fight ignorance. We hate not knowing why something is the way it is. It seems to me that the cave symbolizes a sort of ignorance - a death of philosophy and explanations: "But suddenly, at the edge of [Mrs. Moore's] mind, Religion appeared, poor little talkative Christianity, and she knew that all its divine words from 'Let there be Light' to 'It is finished' only amounted to 'boum' " (150).

Empire

In "Pearls and Swine," Leonard Woolf writes about the English and their attempt to rule India. The English wish to "fix" the people of India by making India similar to England.

The idea of conformity has always fascinated me. If someone doesn't look a certain way or think a certain way, there is something "wrong" with them and they must be "fixed." Why must everyone be the same?

If you look at it in a positive way, you could say that the English enjoy their way of life and wish for everyone else to experience the benefits of a society with, as Woolf's stockjobber says, "schools, hospitals, roads, and raliways," and without "plague, fever, [and] famine" (Woolf, 31).
However, why does the stockjobber add, "let 'em know you are top dog. That's the way to run an eastern country: I'm a white man, you're black; I'll treat you well, give you courts and justice; but I'm the superior race, I'm master here" (Woolf, 31).

I'm all for helping others. Life isn't easy, and if one has the ability to help another, that's fantastic. It certainly is better to have schools, hospitals, roads, and railways instead of plague, fever, and famine, but what about the more psychological donations? Would the English ideals that provide the background for the courts and justice that they are so generously giving to India necessarily go along with Indian ideals?

As "Pearls and Swine" shows, life experience in India is vastly different from life experience in India. It helps if one has knowledge of another's experiences before they attempt to change the other's way of thinking.

It often seems that if one tries to include non-material gifts (ideas) with material gifts (hospitals), one is asking for a great deal of trouble.

Roger Fry and Andy Warhol

I found the passage on the bottom of page 115 and the top of 116 in Fry's "Art and Socialism" to be particularly intriguing. Fry describes how new ideas in art are often rejected until an intermediary takes the new idea and "disinfects" it for the masses by merging the new idea with an old idea, and then is hailed as a genius.

The artist that immediately popped into my head was Andy Warhol. Roger Fry's point applies perfectly to the art and fame of Warhol.

Warhol's art, the art that is so original for being unoriginal, actually has its roots in Marcel Duchamp's "readymades." A particularly notorious one is Duchamp's 1917 "sculpture" entitled Fountain, which is little more than a urinal. Needless to say, people were shocked and organizers of the art exhibit to which Fountain was submitted refused to show it. Duchamp also painted L.H.O.O.Q. in 1919, which features da Vinci's Mona Lisa with a mustache.

Now fast forward to 1964. Andy Warhol unveils his take on sculpture with Brillo Box. Warhol has taken Duchamp's idea, but merged it with advertising, thus sanitizing it and making it presentable to the masses. He also follows Duchamp's lead of copying Mona Lisa, only Warhol decides to copy another famous lady: Marilyn Monroe. Once again, Duchamp's concept has been sanitized and merged with pop cultural nostalgia.

Today, Warhol is considered to be a genius. I don't know about you, but the first time I heard about Marcel Duchamp was in relation to Andy Warhol, that Duchamp "was an influence." This leads fans of Warhol to go back to Duchamp, consider his work, and possibly accept it.

Roger Fry was certainly right. This leads me to wonder, what would Fry think of the boy genius Andy Warhol?

(pictured from top: Brillo Box Andy Warhol, 1964; Marilyn Andy Warhol, 1967; L.H.O.O.Q. Marcel Duchamp, 1919; Fountain Marcel Duchamp, 1917)

Art and Roger Fry Bibliography

Essay in Abstract Design Roger Fry, 1915

Bruneau, Anne-Pascale. “Fry, Roger Eliot (1866-1934).” Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography. Ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2006. 14 September 2009
http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.tcu.edu/view/article/33285.

Fry, Roger. Essay in Abstract Design. Tate Collection, Britain.

Naylor, Gillian, ed. Bloomsbury: Its Artists, Authors and Designers. Boston: Bulfinch Press,
1990.

Reed, Christopher. Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2004.

Shone, Richard. The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1999.

Tate Online. 2003. Tate. 14 September 2009. http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/bloomsburyhtml/group.htm

"Notes on Virginia's Childhood"

I must say, I love to learn about people, so Vanessa Bell's portrait of her sister was right up my alley - and that is exactly what her description of Virginia Woolf felt like - a portrait.

Vanessa Bell writes in a very visual way, like the painter that she is. Her description of her sister sitting at the breakfast table (on page 331), "a very rosy chubby baby, with bright green eyes, sitting in a high chair at the nursery table, drumming impatiently for her breakfast" immediately painted a picture in my mind. Reading the description was like looking at a photograph.

The rest of Bell's biography moves on, presenting itself like a series of snapshots. Bell describes the nurseries of her childhood - "There was a lovely bright fire to go to bed by, coal, food, hot water and babies being carried up many times a day" (pg. 333), and I can see the nurse carrying the children up the stairs and feel the warmth of the "lovely bright fire."

When Bell describes her siblings and herself after a bout of whooping cough, she chooses to portray them as coming out of their illness as "four little skeletons" (333). How very vivid! While "emaciated" or even "very skinny" would have gotten the point across, Bell chooses to paint a picture of sorts - you can see the children shuffling out of their rooms, their ribs clearly visible - they are "four little skeletons."

Bell also mentions one of her classmates in a singing class as "a serious creature, with a hooked nose and a fringe," and a "fiery little Irish boy" who "burst into floods of tears because he wasn't top of the class" (335). Floods of tears!

Rather than simply present an idea, Bell chooses to paint a picture, and that is what I love about her writing!

Hello!

Hi! I'm Elyse. I'm originally from St. Louis, Missouri, and have lived in Texas for three years. I love The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Star Trek, and the soft-serve machines at Market Square! In my spare time, I ride my bike around campus, read, and listen to the radio. I would have to say that my favorite thing I've ever read is To Kill a Mockingbird, and the strangest thing I've ever seen is SuperFrog doing the "Thriller" dance at orientation.

This is my first experience with blogging, but I do read the blog by Stephan Pastis, the creator of the comic "Pearls Before Swine." If you have time, you ought to read it. It's very funny.