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William Handley

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summary: – From proceedings of 2nd Va Woolf Conference, 1992 – Mr Ramsey’s shortcomings: can’t see “things” in front of him (cf Heidegger’s comment of an old . . .

• From proceedings of 2nd Va Woolf Conference, 1992
• Mr Ramsey’s shortcomings: can’t see “things” in front of him (cf Heidegger’s comment of an old story, through Plato, of a heaven-seeker how fell in a well, rescued by a beautiful maid)
• “Time Passes” as meditation on thing-ness
  • Yet Woolf herself “misses” the reality of Mrs. Mc Nab?, other critics say
  • Woolf and Lily caught between the maid and the philosopher
• Overarching theme of distance in novel (title, for example)
• So, thoughts of other people always hampered by partitioning, separation
  • Think of first section, “The Window”—a frame
  • Think of deaths bracketed off in middle section
• You can’t know a thing unless it’s caught in a subject-object relation
  • Seen as violence (culminating in war)
  • Knowing people “deforms” them
  • Aesthetic project is a part of the problem
• We cannot escape the subject-object problem, Handley says
• Woolf re-commits the crimes of Mr. Ramsey
  • Connected to war, which is same kind of violence
  • Cf Army & Navy stores catalog (“cutting out domestic object from war”)
  • James cuts out, while his mother knits (needles sharp)
• Lily attempts to get out of framing
  • Doesn’t see Mrs R as a flower, as a rep of Queen Victoria, but as her being
  • But sees her still as “Mrs R,” the male name
• Finally, “Time Passes” section gets beyond that framing
  • Woolf overcomes her own economic blindness to understand Mrs. Mc Nab?
  • Even though Mr R is “subjectified through” the table that Mrs. McN can overcome
• Woolf isn’t a “mystic,” but is concerned w/subject-object relations too
• Lily’s momentary vision of Mrs R, and Woolf’s of Mrs. Mc Nab?, go far in trying to understand woman-ness out of aesthetic framing