Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

Performing the Self
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series of mini-performances for her reader or listener. Her letters, for example, are often addressed
to the alter-egos of the recipients, while her own alter-ego, tailored to that particular
individual, is signed off at the bottom. Th e personae ask the recipient to collude in the creation
of the fantasy, bonding Woolf and her reader in closer communion. Woolf’s personae
found their origin in childhood when Virginia Stephen took on the role of Miss Jan who
appears in stories, letters, and diaries. Her double becomes the receptacle for all childish
misdemeanours and the means by which she is able to sublimate her social ineptitude. Miss
Jan performs a therapeutic function, allowing Virginia Stephen to exorcise her anger, frustration,
disinterest, and embarrassment. In an early diary entry, she records how she
Sat and was talked to by Lisa, till another lady came in. Poor Miss Jan utterly lost
her wits dropped her umbrella, answered at random talked nonsense, and grew
as red as a turkey cock. Only rescued from this by S. proposing to go away. So
we left, I with the conviction that what ever talents Miss Jan may have, she does
not possess the one qualifying her to shine in good society. (PA 39)
Real-life role-playing, while a rich source of creativity and entertainment, was also
a means of survival. Woolf’s Miss Jan was one method of dealing with being a young
lady in Victorian England and she was by no means alone in requiring such a strategy.
Th e personae adopted by women were made necessary by their powerless position within
society. Carolyn Heilbrun describes this process: “Lying with one’s body and one’s words
is, among the oppressed, a dreadful necessity. Outsiders must often lie to survive. Only
women, I think, have also consistently lied to themselves” (70). However, in the Stephen
sisters’ cases they resisted believing the reality of their acts. Woolf recalls proudly how
Vanessa eschewed social conditioning while superfi cially representing the model of it:
Unfortunately, what was inside Vanessa did not altogether correspond with what
was outside. Underneath the necklaces and the enamel butterfl ies was one passionate
desire—for paint and turpentine, for turpentine and paint. But poor
George was no psychologist. His perceptions were obtuse. He never saw within.
(MOB 149)
Role-playing for Vanessa and Virginia was an expediency, a temporary measure until freedom
broke through with Leslie Stephen’s death.
At its worst, dramatising life through role-play leaves the reader or audience uncertain
as to what point role-playing becomes reality and at what point acting becomes
being. Th e danger lies in seeing, according to Wilshire, “the off stage world only [in terms
of] passivity, fascination, hypnotic-lie engulfment, or…instinctual cunning and calculation”
(xv-xvi). Reading socialised behaviour as a “lie” or “act” can lead to the supposition
that, as Erving Goff man warns, “all role playing and nearly all human behaviour [is]
defensive or phoney” thus leading to the “doubt that a real self exists” (cited in Wilshire
xvi). Brecht’s Verfremdung eff ect translated into life if you will. However, Woolf’s various
personae which she plays out in the letters, or her refl ections on the multiplicity of the
human character, lead more towards the conclusion that her diff ering tones do not always
imply defence, deceit, or the loss of a unifi ed self, they simply enliven and entertain.