WRITERS AND BIOGRAPHICAL CINEMA

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. Sylvia, written by John Brownlow and directed by Christine Jeffs, is a BBC Films, Capitol Films, UK Film Council and Focus Features film. The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry and written by David Hare, was adapted from Michael Cunningham's novel by the same title, and released by Mirimax Films and Paramount Pictures. Iris, directed by Richard Eyre with a screenplay by Richard Eyre and Charles Wood, is based on the memoirs of John Bayley, Iris Murdoch's husband, and is a BBC Films, Intermedia and Miramax film.

2. From Sylvia Plath's poem ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ in Ariel (1968, 47).

3. When referring to The Hours I am referring specifically to the Virginia Woolf narrative.

4. In my discussion, ‘Virginia Woolf, ‘Sylvia Plath’ and ‘Iris Murdoch’ refer to the characters as represented in these films, while ‘Woolf, ‘Plath’ and ‘Murdoch’ refer to the historical women writers.

5. For an historical discussion of constructions of male and female in Western philosophy from Classical to Modern times see Genevieve Lloyd's The Man of Reason (1984).

6. Hermione Lee also discusses the use of sedatives as a method in the treatment of neurasthenia (1999, 179).

7. This quotation from an interview with Virginia Nicolson published in The Independent, 7 July 2004, was obtained from the Virginia Woolf listserve, [email protected], posted by S. Shulman on 7 July 2004.

8. For a discussion of cultural interpretations and responses to shell-shock during and following the First World War see Joanne Bourke's Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain, and the Great War (1996, 107–23) and Showalter (1985, chap. 7).

9. On the first occasion, the morning after an argument with Ted Hughes, she apologizes for her behaviour, explaining that she was very ‘tired’ and that she has reorganized her teaching duties so that she ‘won't be quite so tired’. The second scene in which she alludes to her fatigue is when Assia and David Wevill visit the Hughes in Devon, by which time they have two children. As her real desire for the Wevill's departure is due to her suspicions about Assia's relations with Ted Hughes, her claims to exhaustion could be read as the excuses of an irrationally suspicious woman; ‘I'd like you and Assia to leave in the morning. It's just that I'm tired, so tired. And, you don't know what I've been through. I have two small children. If you had children of your own you'd understand’ (Sylvia 2003).

10. See the ‘Synopsis’ in the ‘About the Film’ link on the Sylvia official website (http://www.sylviamovie.com).

11. In her introduction to Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground (1996), Gillian Beer discusses how, in both her fiction and non-fiction, Woolf seeks to democratize historical, scientific and philosophical theory and discourse by relocating them within the space of ordinary, non-academic thought and experience. For other investigations into the role of the ordinary, habitual and everyday in Woolf's philosophy and aesthetics see Liesl M. Olson (2002/3), and Lorraine Sim (2005a).