“The current answers don't do”: The comic form of night and day

References and notes

• March 27 1973 . A Writer's Diary , March 27 , 10 New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich . (1953: rpt.1919
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• Holtby , Winifred . 1932 . “ ("Virginia Woolf Is Not Jane Austen,” . In Virginia Woolf , 96 97 London : Wishart & Co. .
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• Daiches , David . 1963 . Virginia Woolf, , rev. ed. , 20 21 Norfolk, Conn. : New Directions . A more detailed and influential statement of the case, however, was made by 1942; rpt.
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• Hafley , James . 1953 . The Glass Roof , 27 34 Berkeley : University of California Press . Since then variants on the theme have been put forward by
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• Bazin , Nancy Topping . 1973 . Virginia Woolf and the Androgynous Vision , 82 New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers U.P. .
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• Zuckerman , Joanne P. 1973 . “Anne Thackeray Ritchie as the Model for Mrs. Hilbery in Virginia Woolf's . Night and Day, Virginia Woolf Quarterly , 1 ( 3 ) : 32 – 46 .
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• Cameron , Julia Margaret and Powell , Tristram , eds. 1973 . “Julia Margaret Cameron,” . In Victorian Photographs of Famous Men and Fair Women, , 13 – 19 . Boston : David Godine . (1926; rpt.
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• 1975 . “Women and Woolf's Comic Fiction,” . In George Meredith, Virginia Woolf, and Their Feminist Comedy , Stanford University . I discuss these works and others in my dissertation in Chapter 6,
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• Bell , Quentin . 1972 . Virginia Woolf , Vol. II , 42 New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich . See also Zuckerman. Though I disagree with some of the conclusions of her article, I have found it helpful and interesting
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• Zuckerman, p. 35.
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• I discuss the significance of these photographs in my dissertation.
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• “The Enchanted Organ,” . CE , IV 73 – 75 . This and the following quotations are from
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• 1969 . Night and Day , Penguin edition , Harmondsworth : Penguin . (1919; rpt.). When quoting from this English edition, I have silently added a period to such abbreviations as “Mr.” in order to use a single form throughout
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• In my treatment of Rosalind I am indebted to Joyce Melville (University of North Dakota) and to the discussions we had when she was at the University of California‐Berkeley and our dissertations were in their early stages.
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• Schaefer , Josephine O'Brien . 1965 . The Three‐Fold Nature of Reality in the Novels of Virginia Woolf , 59 The Hague : Mouton .
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• Datchet , Mary and Malvolio , eds. Night and Day and Twelfth Night, 51 52 ). I find these less illuminating than a comparison with As You Like It, which after all Woolf invites with her references to Rosalind
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• Gilman , Albert , ed. 1963 . “As You Like It,” . In As You Like It , 227 228 New York : New American Library . 1959; rpt. in
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• My view of Mary Datchet differs from that of previous critics in the following ways.
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• Kelley , Alice Van Buren . 1973 . The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision , 55 Chicago : University of Chicago Press . ), probably because the texts she uses to support her judgment come from the middle of the book rather than the last third; in fact from Ch. 20, a chapter in which Mary does feel quite hollow, but the chapter that marks the beginning of her change.
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• Bennett , Joan . 1964 . Virginia Woolf , 76 Cambridge : Cambridge U.P. .
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• 1966 . Virginia Woolf , 14 New York : Columbia U.P. . A number of critics appear not to notice either that Mary Datchet leaves one reform organization and joins another, or that the second is an improvement on the first. Hafley writes that “Night and Day is anything but friendly to reform societies in general and feminism in particular” (p. 33). Carl Woodring's judgment “That Mrs. Woolf admired the dedication of feminists but stood back from their typewriter‐and‐placard absurdities” is accurate as far as it goes, but it does not do justice to Night and Day's rather carefully discriminated political outlook). Herbert Marder sees that Mary's suffrage organization is patriarchal. But he writes that Mary “decide[s] to … specialize in women's rights” that she
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• 1968 . Feminism and Art , 93 94 Chicago : U. of Chicago Press . feels that she has no choice but to throw in her lot with Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal, who, at any rate, are working for a better world. She knows the full implications of the commitment… . “She had renounced something and was now—how could she express it?—not quite ‘in the running’ for life. She had always known that Mr. Clacton and Mrs. Seal were not in the running… . All this had never struck her so clearly as it did this afternoon, when she felt that her lot was cast with them for ever” (
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• To quote this passage as if it defines Mary Datchet, something Marder is not alone in doing, is to freeze Mary at Ch. 20 when there are still fourteen chapters to go. In my view, the words “this afternoon, when she felt” are crucial words in the passage.
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• Daiches, by contrast, says that Mary, at the end of the novel, is “alone but no longer unhappy” he is virtually the only critic to say that she works “for the cause of democracy” (p. 20). Holtby takes an admiring view of Mary Datchet (pp. 95, 96), saying that “The light in the solitary spinster's room was to Mrs. Woolf a sign of triumph, not of loneliness.” She writes,
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• it was not by accident that … the agent for breaking the bonds of unreality and setting true love free [was] a suffrage worker. In one sense Night and Day is a fable of the process taking place in English society before the war, when Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Pankhurst were not only leading young ladies from stagnation in … their parents’ homes, but were making a far more honourable and true marriage relation possible for them.
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• In Holtby's view Mary Datchet is “not left unsatisfied” “the defence of truth, the liberation of the spirit was more important than the fortuitous satisfaction of a personal love.” This statement is true enough, but it speaks of Mary as if she could really “stand for” what Hafley says she does, “reason denying emotion” (Hafley, p. 33). It does not get at the fineness of Mary's emotional life and relations with her friends. And Holtby's calling Mary a “suffrage worker” again appears to ignore Woolf's criticism of aspects of the suffrage movement and Mary's broader political activity.
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• Pippett , Aileen . 1957 . The Moth and the Star , 125 New York : Viking Press . [1953; rpt.
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• Brewster , Dorothy . 1963 . Virginia Woolf , 94 London : George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. . [1962; rpt.), and Joan Bennett (p. 55) note that Katharine learns from Mary's example what love is like, but do not discuss Mary's active role in urging belief in the importance of attachment
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• 1969 . “The Mythos of Spring: Comedy,” . In Anatomy of Criticism. , 163 – 185 . New York : Àtheneum . (1957 rpt.
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