Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

4 WOOLFIAN BOUNDARIES
tion” and is “a vigorous breaking free from old shackles and conventions” (Th esis 215).
Although not including Th ree Guineas in the scope of her thesis at all, Mass identifi es
Woolf’s general critique of Church, Psychology, Conformity, Uniformity, and Tyranny, all
explored in the Philosophy section (Th esis 3: 117). She clearly sees Woolf as ideas-driven.
Mass argues that in Orlando Woolf engages the idea of one energy through time, and follows
with Th e Waves as the parts within the one, thus establishing the idea of the creative
vision wave unfolding from text to text seamlessly. Mass explores Th e Waves as a spiritual
growth cycle (Th esis 420) in a reading which appears to show the informed ideas coming
through her own family experiences, such as her mother’s philosophical involvement with
Unitarian, Christian Science, Th eosophical, and Transcendentalist ideas, certainly an area
for future study.
Th e concentration on the development of the novels as ideas and forms in a sequence
helps Mass to pick up the framework of the whole body of work, the developmental shifts
as a kind of spiritual creative journey. Mass calls Woolf a “visionary escapist” (Th esis 202).
Between the Acts, as the last novel in the life, becomes for Mass the dystopic other, the break
in the process, although valiant and still brilliant. However Mass reads Between the Acts, the
last novel and the last text to come to her just as she is completing her thesis, with the shock
of her knowledge of the suicide. She sees the novel as a paradox, with signs of “a certain
world weariness” (Th esis 484), “a bitterness and venom like Swift,” “it’s a sorrowful book,
bitter, with weariness and doubt, a great book nonetheless, a microscopic and expansive
vision, restating the conviction that human life is renewed” (Th esis 483). Mass fi nds the
women characters in all the later works, especially the older women, as having “a gift for
exaggeration, with exuberance and variety,” like Mrs Swithin (Th esis 202). Th ese are women
represented by a woman, and as in Dorothy Richardson’s writing, she recognises it is something
really new in English literature. She answers the literary criticisms about weakness of
character in Woolf and issues of class with the defence that Woolf was not creating conventional
characters at all. Th ese are not stories with characters so much as an inner landscape
or composition like music being composed from within. She sees Woolf creating a language
of her own mind, that which she sees, the multiplicity of the senses and the selves, a very
modern psyche fractured and yet disciplined. In Mass’s view, Woolf’s work purpose is not to
include all social classes any more than if she were composing music or a painting.
Th e young Mass has no way to know or wonder what life is like in Sussex during the
war, nor really any depth of knowledge about the rise of Fascism, and she judges the politics
in Between the Acts as its core failure. She says, “Th e volley of abuse and protest poured
forth from the megaphone in [Woolf’s] last novel is the most off ensive of her outbursts,
but it is an exception” (Th esis 216). Mass was writing during a time of deeply pressured
and reconfi gured patriotism, when a rage at defeatism and ideas about the separation of
art and politics were prevalent. Possibly this leads to a misreading of satire and humour
in the work, and too close a reading of Miss La Trobe as Woolf herself. Mass sees despair
where more recent critics do not, and thus she misreads some of the humour and satire.
In a letter to her mentor, W. G. Cousins of publishers Angus and Robertson, she writes:
“Th e thesis would have been impaired by a lack of fi rst-hand acquaintance with BTA, lucky
to get a copy. I needed someone else’s opinion of it, once I had written 11,000 words about
it…” She had asked Cousins for help, and he sends her articles. Mass responds,